The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1919 THE BRITISH ELECTIONS.

Taihape Daily Times, 3 January 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1919 THE BRITISH ELECTIONS.

(With wbich is incorporated The Tft!* nape Poet Lad Walwamo Newa)..

British elections just completed have discovered a revulsion in politics that is not, apparently, attracting the attention of this Dominion it might be expected to do. The war has so happily ended that the capital of ttif British Empire will remain, as hitherto, the clearing house of the world, and there is nothing to indicate that Britain will be challenged as the hub of the world's trade and commerce. Therefore, as all trade and finance, as well as all domestic policy'has to he conducted in accordance with laws and regulations made by the British Government, it must be realised that an exporting country which lives and progresses upon what it must sell in Britain can be immensely affected for weal or woe by the nature of the Government elected by the British people. The fact is that momentously important events are so rapidly crowding one upon the other that our national vision cannot focus them in their true and

natural perspective. The people of ! Britain have demonstrated their utter contempt for political parties, factions and shibboleths by which the apostles ! of greed hoped for a return to the old state and policy that obtained when war was at its crisis and the Empire, in its deathgrip with the enemy, was in direst need of men. Brtiain as well as Germany has been adjudged a corrupt nation, individuals having no thought or care for their fellows -pile up huge fortunes,- leaving millions oi„ human derelicts in their wake; they seize the means of government and ' make money the ruling power. Decep- | I tion-mongering, cheating and secret | trading combinations were nothing | | more than bands of robbers; by a das*h j !of two of. a pen they decreed that i j people should pay five-pence halfpennyJi ! for a penny .reel of cotton. Tljis" secret'j j trading :;as? t well as. secret diplomacy and secret'; treaties with their con- | j comitant army of.'posers and pretenders | are all to be scrapped and the cultured ; in cunning, in lying, in pretence, and, men who have been trained to make facts appear false and vice versa in the courts of presumedly friendly governments are to awake to find their occupations gone. The British constituencies' have mightily declared foi that which is real, practical and honest in trade, politics and diplomacy; and how is the change undeniably demanded by the British people going to affect New Zealand? In discussions of things

essentially New Zealand such words as profiteering and robbery, are too often used with, levity, with thoughtlessness; and when New Zealand's producers are compared with Britain's manufacturers and shipping firms,well, the difference is the antithesis. With 1 sangfroid sewing-cotton spinners will J assert that present prices charged for sewing cotton are justly warranted by the cost of raw material, and the knit-ting-wool spinner tells a similarly revolting lie, but there is no law to stop the infamous, death-bringing predations of the army of thieves that have seized upon wool, meat, cotton, and other commodities out of which millions are legally taken without any fear of boasted courts of justice, and in spite of disgusting brag about honest trading. The British people have decreed that there shall be a stop put to robbery of producer and consumer that has been rampant under old political regimes; that there is to be no room for the polemic in old trading methods. There will be trading co-ordination in accordance with the experiences of the war; the system in which there are I two parties, the robber and the victim, , is to be wiped right out by the millions returning from the war, and the mili lions that have saved the Empire in j the munition and other war material factories. British people have little else but scorn agd contempt for old trading systems that were legislatively made possible by the sharks who got political power through their cult of cajolery and cunning. There is to be clean sweep after clean sweep in politics until they do rest upon an honest and a humane basis. This is what Mr Lloyd George promised the people and that is why the people gave L'm no equivocal mandate to inaugurate and put into practice his policy of progress with honesty. In the cabled comments . on the subject from British newspapers we realise haw* much dependence is placed on "artv. That marvel and exponent of ■"">"-;fi<r T -. Rneralism, f} lo "Manchester Guardian." sees in Lloyd George's victory "{lie inherent dangers of

democracy, namely, the ability of the party in power, by seizing. a moment of popular excitement and confusion, to secure a verdict which is not genuine."- Was democracy ever more deliberately insulted or maligned? The fact is that old granny of British liberalism has not yet ob- , served that old political parties are doomed and that they have already commenced their passing. If there had been an election in New Zealand that newspaper would have been eonfronted with an argument diametrically opposed to that furnished by that in which it sees the inherent I danger of democracy. The "West-

minister Gazette" furnishes particulars as to what those inherent dangers consist of. That journal states: "British liberalism must face the fact that the working class vote moves steadily towards the Labour Party, and it must endeavour to find a place in a united democratic progressive movement and thus prevent class schism." These great liberal journals of the old school fear class schism; they fear the secession of the people from the old cruel tenets of liberalism that provided for the making of millionaries and paupers; they, see in the steady flow of the people to democracy the writing on the wall and they would' endeavour to circumvent disintegration of liber-

alism by throwing liberal ferment into tbe ranks of democracy with a view •to saving something. The most glaring, amazing fact discovered an the people's mandate to -Lloyd George is that a very large proportion of erstwhile conservatives are openly avowing articles of the democratic creed; they have allied themselves with Mr Lloyd George in an endeavour to secure a complete remodelling of British society; they have had a

rude ft wakening to the fact that without a healthy, virile democracy, an aristocracy would be at the mercy'of any predatory nation, and they are rushing to a partition of their lands to ensure the democracy every opportunity of, in a comparatively short time, becoming a democracy in fact as well as name. Other liberal journals do not see with the 'Manchester Guardian, they assertively state that the British nation lias decreed poll- j tical banishment to the' two great i political parties whom it regarded as unfaithful to the national cause, and has returned a party which has best expressed its love for British institutions. The British people are no longer going to tolerate ;just what one of two old worn out political parties care to give, they have, as the "Daily Chronicle" states, "ralhlod around iLloyd George as representing a patriotic democracy, be-

causc«they want big things done, and it will go ill with any party or section that attempts to stand between him and the people's mandate." The democracy in New Zealand differs nothing in its wants from the democracy in Britain, and when the time comes it will stand firmly for a "patriotic democracy*' with love for British institutions, and it will send into banishment those who have been ununfaitful to the national cause, those who favour the un-British profiteering and land-aggregating institutions. The British democracy cures nothing for political parties; a programme of democratic reforms was promised by Lloyd George and they have given him an unassailable mandate to put that programme into practice.