POLITICS WITHOUT IDEALS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 29 July 1929, Page 2

POLITICS WITHOUT IDEALS

The modern politician sadly realises that- the causes in which he has to enlist his eloquence and zeal have been reduced from the heroic to the commonplace scale, the “Morning Post” remarked recoil ly. 11 cannot escape the notice of the most superficial that nowadays ihe coolest of parties is not-over great queslions of-abstract principle and fundamental faith, but over differences of method and detail, and even over questions of bread and butter. It is as if the last. Crusade had been fought and as if the Crusaders had indeed, as Wordsworth feared, changed swords for ledgers. There is a school which teaches that behind till the great events of hislory—from the Trojan War to the French Ite-volution-—is to lie found an economic impulse. To-day that hypothesis seems lo have been adopted nationally and idealism has been transposed into terms of economics. No doubt it is partly the nfler-effecl of I lie flreat War which has made life so much more difficult for all of ns. Crusiyling is not for those desperately engaged in. the struggle for existence. No doubt the solid prosperity of Ihe 19lh century was necessary to give inspiration and scope to Gladstone's passionate interest in “subject nations rightly struggling to he free,” and in those other high-sounding causes which to-day move its no more (ban the rattling of dry peas in a bladder. Is it the influence of the women which has demonstrated how completely political science is dominated hv domestic economy? They are, as a sex, both realists j and romantics, and if lliey have for the time being discouraged political heroics they may yet lie rekindled to Ihe height of a great argument.