THE POINT OF VIEW

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 36, 5 October 1931, Page 2

THE POINT OF VIEW

Almost everyone can draw upon his own experience for proof of the psychologist's dictum that cheerfulness breeds courage and despondency indnces fear. So intimately are mental and physieal states connected with one's ontlook on life that it car be shown that an erect spine and a lifted chin can together induce an attitude which predisposes towards a courageous taclding of life's problems. There is sound psychology behind the initial training of army recruits, which is largely concerned with the development of an erect carriage and a confident bearing. Kipling also knew what he was doing when he wrote "If". His words have the musical glamour beloved of the sentimentalist and the very young. Stripped of this, however, the message they convey survives the test of the realist despite its idealism, because of its psychological truth. All this is perfectly obvious. The ordinary citizen of average intelligence has learned it in the course of his daily life and instinctively recognises its truth. It is the more difficult, therefore, to understand the attitude of the Government regarding the difficulties under which the country is labouring. Th6 constantly repeated pronouncements that, bad as things are, there is worse ahead, may possibly serve to soften the blow when additions to the already unbearable burden of taxes are announced, but they help in no small measure to make those additional taxes necessary, by adding depression of spirit to the depression of trade. Apparently, when Sir Joseph Ward died, the last optimist in the Dominion's political life was removed. Worse still, the only sound psychologist in politics was lost to the country. One of Mr. Forbes's first acts when he assumed the Premiership was to utter a dithyrambic wail of warning regarding the country's financial situation At intervals ever since, as we have previously pointed out, he has repeated the performanee, and without taking any vpry easily recognisable steps to correct the trouble. When the Coalition Government was formed the hope was widely felt that a firmer, and so a more cheerful, attitude toward the Dominion's pressing problems would be taken by those responsible for guiding it from the maze of difficulty into which its own past thriftlessness and the present world-wide economie disorganisation have combined to lead it. There is now, unhappily, grave reason to fear that this hope was not , justified. The Press has been permitted to "gather," following Cabinet discussions of the Budget problem, that while the politicians have been busy taiking and making their own arrangements to carry on, apparently in the same old way, if under a new name, the country's aceounts have been allowed to go another million or so to the bad. Questioned by Pressmen on the matter, Mr Forbes was, as usual, irritatingly vague in his replies, but he managed, nevertheless, to convey his favourite

impression — one of hopeless pessimism. Surely the "seriousness of the situation is now sufficiently realised by all classes of the community — except, of course, the professional politicians and certain labour "leaders"— to warrant the Government's taking a firm and less hopeless attitude regarding the future. Despite the vapouring of political pessimists, the country is at bottom a--. sound financially as it is at heart. It is waiting; asking for a lead and will respond when the call comes, with the courage, the determination and the ability to see things through that it has always displayed in the past. If the politicians could only see it, what the country wants now more than anythirig else is a leader. • ^ . , . . UP-