NATIONAL RECOVERY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 18, 14 September 1931, Page 2

NATIONAL RECOVERY

The manner in which the people of Great Britain have accepted the staggering tax and economy provisions of the National Government's emergency Budget is a convincing and final answer to the croakers who whine that the Old Country is done for. No people which can meet grave crises and cantemplate severe personal sacrifices with the cairn fortitude shown in their present difhculties by the people of Britain can be affected very deeply by the canker of degeneration. Superficial deterioration in the past 20 years or so there has been, at Home no less than in other parts of the Empire. But some of the causes of this are obvious; the disastrous war, in which the victors lost not less than the vanquished being the chief. There is, however, another and far less obvious cause; a cause which only now is beginning to be realised, and that as yet but dimly. These are the effects of the gradual and quite logical development of the Lincolman theory of democracy; Government of the people, by the people . Government by the people, in its full significance, mqst mean, by the whole of the people, without regard to fitness for the task or any consideration other than the possession of citizenship, Throughout the Empire, where this logical form of democracy has been most fully developed — America having long departed from it, if, indeed, she ever honestly subscribed to a belief in it — the story is, unhappily the same. Under the abnormal strains and stresses of the aftermath of war the system has developed weaknesses and been found to possess faults which, now we all suffer from their effects, are causing larger and larger numbers of intelligent citizens, not only at Home, but also in Australia (where the effects have been most severe) and even in the Dominion (which as yet has suffered least) to ask themselves whether the present system of Government is all it has been believed to be, either actually or potentially. This spirit of inquiry is, in, itself, a healthy thing. Smug satisfaction with things as they are never got anyone anywhere. It has its dangers however. Those members of the community who, through no fault of their' own, are least capable of forming sound judgments and taking long and impersonal views, will almost inevitably follow the dema.gogue, the man (or party) who will promise most, regardless whether or not the promises, if carried into effect, would operate to the advantage of those to whom they are made. It is not even necessary, as we have seen -in New South Wales and even in this country, that such promises should be capable of fulfilment. What matters is that they should sound attractive. Unfortunately, the calibre of the politician class, in these days when, in full conformity with our theory of democracy, the politician has been admitted to be — in some cases at least — worthy of his hire, has fallen so greatly that the temptation to take advantage of this weakness has become so strong and surrender to it so common that it now requires a mental effort to recognise it for the rotten thing, the bribery that it is. We in New Zealand are suffering from the effects of this weakness

(among others) in our political system; the people of Australia are suffering even more severely and, judging by the figures published by Mr. Snowden, himself a Radical of the Radicals, in his latest Budget, the people of the Old Country are suffering most severely of all. At Home, to-day however, there are signs that some of the evils of the immedate past are at last gaining recognition. There are even more encouraging signs that the British people as a whole still are capable of one of those united efforts in the Nation's interests which so often have rescued the race from a dangerous position. In Australia the demagogue still clings to his wanted power with almost asl much ease and apparently as piuch success as he iid in the years of plenty. In New Zealand we must see that hjs kindred are reduced to that condition of importance which the national safety demands.