RETURNING SANITY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 103, 22 December 1931, Page 4

RETURNING SANITY

There can be no doubt that at long last sanity is returning to the world. One more proof to add to the mounting evidence for the case was given in Australia on Saturday when the people decisively rejected the deceptively attractive policy of Messrs. Theodore and Scullin in favour of the harder road proposed by Mr. Lyons and his supporters. A survey of the figures shows that in all the continent, Sydney and.its.environs alone remains under the spell of the wrecker. The result should go far to correct a false impression regarding the Australian attitude which is more or less inevitable in New Zealand owing to its, proximity to Sydney, whose news and views necessarily bulk largely in the cables from the Commonwealth. Sydney's position is in many respeets unique. Within a radius of less than thirty miles from the General Post Office is congregated more than half of the population of the Commonwealth's greatest, oldest and .most populous State . In many districts crowded together and living under conditions which, despite the much vaunted Australian standard of living, would shock the average New Zealander, Sydney's highly industrialised population is ideal soil for the seeds of disruption which selfish politicians and foreign agitators delight in sowing. Fortunately for Australia and the Emiiire as a whole, Sydney is not the Commonwealth, as, the election results show. In this instance it is possible, just as it was in the case of Great Britaiii recently, for men of all political creeds including Labour, except, of course, the extremists, to feel pleased with the result because, although the offieial Federal Labour Party has been cast out into the wilderness, as it deserved to be, its defeat does not mean the defeat of the best in the Labour faith, but rather its victory over its most deadly enemy, the enemy within the gate. This is demonstrated by the fact that the victorious United Australia Party is led by a Labour stalwart carrying a banner under which are to be found the best elements of all the parties in the Commonwealth. It is only necessary to mention that Mr. Lyons has with him men like Messrs J. E. Fenton, W. A. Holman and W. M. 'Hughes, all good Labour men forced at one time or another out of the offieial ranks by extremism of one kind or another. Mr. Hughes may perhaps be suspect in this connection. He has been the stormy petrel of Australian politics ever since English flattery during the war destroyed his sense of humour, but it was extremism of a peculiarly distasteful kind which, led by Mr Theodore's mentor and chief, the late Mr. T. J. Ityan, forced him from the Labour ranks during the war. No such suspicion can attach to Messrs Lyons, Fenton or Holman, who, have remained. true to the essentials of their faith, which is a sound, safe, hard-working Australia, rather than the crazy, dishonest, lazy man's Utopia which men like Theodore and Lang profess to pine for and offer to create. The Australian result is particularly opportune at this time. All over the Empire signs increase almost daily of a growing realisation of the new and promising road which lies ahead if it will but travel it. The conference to be held at Ottawa next year will provide the opportunity to crystallise this awakening and direct it along a planned course and it is. vital that success should not be jeopardised by extremist views of any colour. If the Irish Free State escapes the clutches of de Valera at its coming elections, it is now reasqnable to expect that the whole Empire will be represented by men of staunch loyalty to its ideals, for even the South African, General Hertzog's Afrikander n'ationalism has grown more far-seeing with his experience of responsibility. Hopes therefore are justified that the coming year will witness the dawn of a new era founded upon a new conception of Empire, based not upon arms, but upon work and co-operation and mutual freedom and trust.