The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 1929 THE DECLINE OF POLITICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 717, 17 July 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 1929 THE DECLINE OF POLITICS

THERE is no country in tlie world that is satisfied with its politics and the work of politicians. And yet there is no parliament anywhere in which its members are not dissatisfied with their wages. They all want more money or, failing financial reward, at least more gratitude for their services. In New Zealand for some time past there has been a quiet, but determined, movement toward securing a substantial increase in the honoraria of representative politicians. It does not look as though the Oliver Twists in the House will get more for some time to come. Like other workers, politicians must be judged on the results of their labour, and paid accordingly. On this principle members of Parliament have not earned the right to ignore the protest of taxpayers and raise their wages. The new Labour Government in Great Britain appears to be willing to grant an inquiry into the salaries of Ministers, if such should be the general wish of the House of Commons. This willingness is not surprising. Labour Governments everywhere have never been backward about increasing politicians’ wages. It is the kind of Parliamentary progress in which Socialism becomes a very active Liberalism. And it is incidentally one of the few political questions about which Conservatives are not conservative. There has been a great deal of talk in Great Britain during recent years concerning the so-called inadequate salaries paid to Ministers of the Crown. The main reason given in support of the plea for much higher salaries has been the plausible argument that, if statesmen gave to professional and commercial pursuits the same time, energy and ability they give to politics, they would earn at least twice as much money as they are paid for political service. There are twenty-one Ministers with portfolios in the British Cabinet, and their salaries' range from a minimum of :£2,000 to £IO,OOO a year, the latter sum being paid to the Lord High Chancellor. The Prime Minister and five other colleagues each receive £5,000 a year, while the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General are given £7,000 and £6,000. respectively, but are privileged to draw fees running to as much as £17,000 per annum. These honoraria and easy pickings seem enough to make many business men east wistful eyes on politics as a profession, but, really, politicians themselves honestly believe that such salaries and fees are pittances upon which it is extremely difficult to maintain adequately the roles of statesmen and brilliant administrators. Doubtless taxpayers everywhere would not hesitate to suffer higher taxation in order to make the life of the hard and apparently ill-paid politician a little easier and more comfortable, if politics were even as good as in the great days when politicians were not paid at all, but laboured out of love for their country and Empire. But the standard of polities today, in spite of the millions sterling which are spent on the Parliaments of the greatest Empire in the world, is pathetically low and marked with a chronic mediocrity. Ever since the introduction of professionalism in Parliamentary service there has "been a steady decline of polities and also in the calibre of politicians. Generally, almost in all countries the people are interested in politics only during an election fight. After that excitement has passed away, bookmakers are often more prominent and popular than administrators. Increased salaries have failed notoriously in Australia and also, but not so notoriously, in New Zealand and Great Britain to improve the work of Parliament. The lure of easy money as a reward for an exercise of the gift of the gab has, however, wrought a remarkable change in democratic political representation. Consider, for example, the new House of Commons with Labour in power. It is not to be wondered at that many observers now are asking if the occupations of members give some index as to their outlook? The Labour Party in the House comprises no fewer than 150 trade unionists, as compared with 19 landowners or rentiers, eight representatives each from financial and legal circles, 25 journalists, a score of teachers, four clergymen, two civil servants, nine doctors and 23 others who are as Solomon’s lilies. If Ministerial salaries should he raised during the Labour Government’s regime, it looks as though many trade unionists will he raised to an aristocratic level of democracy and draw from £5,000 to £IO,OOO a year as a reasonable wage for political labour. Meanwhile, the decline of politics is an international disease. THE SOVIET’S QUANDARY UNDER his socialist veneer, even the Bolshevik is a patriot at heart. It has required only a threat at its Manchurian railway concessions, now of such long standing as to he accepted as a right, to convert the Soviet into a nation of fire-eaters,'oblivious of the brotherhood of man. In Moscow, whither the embryo New Zealand Communist Party not long since dispatched its Mr. Wiffen, an emissary whose task was to learn the ways by which the world’s workers were to be united, the ideals of international unity are now forgotten in the general desire to go to Avar. It is all a very sad reflection of human imperfections. But the Soviet is unlikely to go to war. Its immense army is effective only in numbers, and not in organisation, equipment or training. Its navy is a decrepit squadron that in its occasional Baltic cruises usually loses at least one ship in collision. Its air force, the best-equipped and organised of the services, is estimated to have nearly 800 machines in commission. But the effectiveness of this force would he greatly lessened if it were transplanted to a war theatre on Russia’s distant eastern frontier, where there is always the embarrassing possibility that China might he joined by Japan, a nation which has never been sympathetic to Russian aspirations, and which would welcome some excuse to take possession of Vladivostok.

Russia’s interests in Manchuria date from the ’nineties, when the Chinese Eastern railway, a short cut to Vladivostok, was formed and operated by Russians. This route cuts off several hundred miles from the line that skirts Manchuria in a great arc to the north. That line runs through Russian territory all the way to Vladivostok, hut in the Siberian winter it is frequently impassable, and in any ease it lias not tbe enormous commercial possibilities of the Chinese Eastern, running as it does through the great junction of Harbin, with its vital connections to Mukden and the South. Since the revival of Manchuria under the war lords, Chinese nationalists have east jealous eyes on the Russian control of the railway, and in spite of Russia’s protests, the present move looks like the beginning of the end. The position is complicated by Japan’s interests. The Japanese, ready at a moment’s notice to throw an efficient army into the field, would not tolerate any movement that tended to consolidate Russia’s position. The Soviet is thus unenviably placed. Even if it could deal with China on its own account, which is doubtful, it is confronted also by the menacing shadow of Japan. So, in spite of the Avar talk in Moscow, there is little prospect of a recourse to arms. Whatever happens, a further blow to Russian prestige seems inevitable.