The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, JULY 23, 1917. PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 23 July 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, JULY 23, 1917. PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihapo Post and Waimarino News).

It is an unassailable fact, a wellestablished truism, that the progress, comfort, and general happiness of the masses of the people in all lands is the result of the closeness of relationship between the governed and their government. In Germany, Japan, and until recently in Russia, the head of the Government is so far removed from the people that a veneration has arisen amounting almost to a form of worship, and had Germany been successful in her almost miraculous effort to dominate the world it is highly probable that beliefs would have gone back thousands df years, to those days when great warriors, the most powerful and bloodthirsty tyrants, would have counted as gods, and in years to come the common people would, as in those ancient times, lived at the mercy and by the permission and will of those who had filched by cunning and the sword complete dominion over them. The forms of government under German domination would have resembled very much those which sprang out o*l Roman conquest, in which, the lowest of conquered peoples had scarcely any right whatever to either the possession of life or property, only in so far as it suited the self-made lords who ruled them. In these later days it has been discovered that there are two methods by which w r orld domination is attainable, one is by military conquest, the other is by commercial conquest. Whichever w r ay is adopted the final result is the same—the subjugation of life and that by "which people live to the will and pleasure of the conquerors. The first indications of putting into practice these methods are as wide apart as the poles; widespread slaughter accompanied by all the atrocities that animal nature in man is capable of leaves no doubt about the commencement of the blood-letting method, but the cunning, insinuating, merciless cold-blooded persistency of the commercial methods are, by chicanery, cajolery and campaigns of subtlety and lying, made to appear as blessings. There is, however, one great distinguishing feature that heralds the truth as the processes progress, and that is the ever-wid-ening distance between the people and their government. Their hold on first one part, then another is lopped oft until the claws on parliament itself brings into view the commercial monsters that would enslave. Satiated with greed, men get possession of the reins of government, and we need not look very closely to-day to see to w T here they are driving country and people. Men ask to be put in power because they stand for settlement and more settlement, now we find they meant aggregation and more aggregation. The countryside in many oldsettled districts has now an appearance of semi-desolation which will become complete as the process develops. The public estate has been friE'ored aw'ay and w-ho know r s where the money has one; the means whereby the country lives and pays its -way are cold-bloodedly being handed over

to capitalist monopolists, who have become so strong that they are openly trying to destroy our producing industries, buy up with their millions the stock that should cause our farmers’ freezing works to flourish findwork for a contented and happy people, make business to prosper and towns to grow. Our State-owned industries and services have been handed over by men imbued with Trust instincts to Commissioners similarly imbued, and entirely taken from the control of the people who consented to be taxed for their institution, as a means whereby the land might be developed and made to produce. To-day we find they are being prostituted to Trust aims and objects, to making huge salaries and earnings to feed the maw of a profligate government. The people who build up these public works and services are being bled white at a time when they should receive the utmost help from State-owned concerns. Under the regime of the men in power the country has had the last thread of control taken from the 'Civil Service, from the Railways, and other Stateowned concerns on which a firm public grip is absolutely essential to public interest, convenience, progress* and comfort. The control of these things has been filched from the people and what is the result? There is bitter dissatisfaction with railways, post and telegraphs, and now' matters are to be accentuated by the last hold Ave had on a ship being hacked off so that this country may be completely at the mercy of trusts and combines. Employees, it is found, no longer consider themselves public servants, with a first duty to the public who pays them; they have the Commissioners to please, those men who have been given absolute possession, made kings of the people’s rightful possessions. These kings set up by men w r ith the power and money-grasping instincts of trusts are diverting public services from working in public interests and for public good, into the devious ways of a syndicalism that is bidding strongly for the control of the world’s industries, and sequentially of the control of the people of the world. There has been no request from local governing bodies for a general mopping up by big city municipalities of the smaller boroughs that surround them. Men in cities with lust for power have been unable to persuade small boroughs to tenter the city spider’s parlour, and they are now urging a self-appointed government to force upon the people that Avhich is diametrically opposed to the people’s best interests. We are told by these self-installed administrators who are governing by their own will, and w-ho have flouted by their own resolutions the will of the people, that a number of counties are doomed. We have seen these counties come into existence, split off from their parent county from time to time as the exigencies and peculiar interests made it necessary, and now it is decreed that these counties, heedless of the hardship it will entail, must be wiped out of existence; the process Avhich increased settlement made essential, is to be reversd so that positions with huge salaries may be found for the most faithful of Trust jackals. The men who are profligate with our blood and eornerers of our industries and money, are expecting the creation of full series of lords and dukes, and it can only be presumed that positions have to be evolved to show off the added glory and importance that the curse of old country excrescences is to bring to Ncav Zealand. So long as Parliament exists solely by its own will it should rigdly abstain from tinkering with faws that have for decades operated in settlement that has lifted this land into the van of producing nations. The mopping up of small boroughs by city vultures, and the obliteration of counties that reflect the work of earnest, honest settlers of the past, without consulting the people is an outrage on our democracy. Much is being allowed and committed in the name of the war, but we trust the National Government will hesitate to take that action that will estrange all sections but those who Avould grip the country’s vitals and strangle its life and industries.