The Business Of Making A Choice

NZ Truth, Issue 1141, 13 October 1927, Page 4

The Business Of Making A Choice

♦ OUMAN existence is surely nothing but a series of selections which every one of us is compelled to make. . Whether it be books or* boots or businesses, wine or wives, friends or food, houses or hobbies we are constantly compelled to decide between many samples offered for our choice. So very much depends upon the way we respond to that obligation even m what may appear its simplest form. No more striking proof of this general characteristic could be deduced than the way we have of determining who shall represent us m the Parliament of the Dominion. That way is indeed curious, for consider ... He who desires a house enlists the services of a builder; he who desires relief from bodily pain hires a doctor and he who desires to take action m law courts will hie him to a lawyer — which is sound business. Not so m politics, apparently. In choosing the men who are to be entrusted with, the task of building the Dominion, or healing the ills of the body politic, or tilling the soil of that vast garden which we call the State — m choosing these, the average citizen forgets the rules, refuses to rely on experience and disregards all elementary commonsense. That business, which includes and governs all other businesses, he chooses shall be run by men from whom as a general rule he does not ask the least pretence to business knowledge. He may get that knowledge ; he often does get it, of course, or things politically would be worse even than they are r His achievement is more by good fortune than by good management; by the vagaries of his luck, not by the exercise of his judgment. The Raglan electorate a few weeks ago suffered from a rush of words to the head and soon political rhetoric will sweep the Dominion from end to end. It behoves us then to be businesslike m lending a listening ear.