The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1919. AN IMPORTANT LIBERAL DECISION

Taihape Daily Times, 24 May 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1919. AN IMPORTANT LIBERAL DECISION

(With whleh iB Incorporated The Taihape Po»t and WaZrsauttao Newo).

The Liberal Party in Parliament has

met in caucus, at which every member was accounted for. This meeting indicates that the day on which, the franchise is to be restored to the people is drawing near; it also lets the constituencies understand that the Liberals have had quite enough of Reform, that they arc about to cut the painter, never more to touch the old rotten Reform ship which they have discovered to be a camouflage to cover selfishness and incapacity. There is to be a return to observance of the grand constitution the old pioneer statesmen founded; there is to be elimination of constitution “niggleygouging” by hybrid politicians, and the constituencies breathe more freely, will look to the immediate future more hooefully and a wave of thankfulness and satisfaction will be felt wherever population is centred. The one resolution- passed will put an end to the sinister and sinuous methods of the leaders of Reform in their efforts to engineer a compact for continuance of the exploitation and oppression taxpayers have been subjected to. The indefinite, disastrous, taihoa, and drift of Reform is to be displaced with a definite progressive radical policy. Something progressive is going to be done, and the word radical means that there is to be a fundamental sweep of political excrescences; that there is to be abolition of monopolies, and that none arc to have chartered rights which savour of popular wrongs. We like the resolution because it promises a new basifying of the people’s cause; feathering Reform nests is to cease and there is come the shadow of the late Hon. John McKenzie over the future land policy, and of Richard John Seddon over the cause for ithe rights of the masses. There is to be a definite progressive radical policy, a policy of straightforwardness, not subtle machiavelian machination of cunning and subterfuge for robbing th e people of thier estate and of their right to protection under the law from those who would exploit them. We arc going to have this country’s land policy reversed and people are to bo given an opportunity, and to be urged back on to the land from which they have been disastrously ousted, and the door closed to their return. The voice of a cheated and robbed people is ward through the liberal caucus and the old regime of muddle, incapacity, and drift i s to go and a definite progressive radical policy i s to replace it. The hopes and insinuations of Sir James Allen have been given a final and definite answer, an d there ds nothing more politically sUre than that ihe curse of Masseyisra is doomed How that Reform has been told that Liberalism is incompatible with it it will be interesting to watch how'increasingly insincere Reform can become. Nothing has been done to increase production to meet coming taxation burdens that our farmers and producers must largely lbba,r because Reform has made the masses too poor to help; soldier settlement is little

more than a sham; any definite political action has been rendered out of the question by the unnatural coalition, and now, with the war finished and the whole work of social, industrial ami political rchabilition, and reconstruction confronting the people it is imperative that the unworkable partnership should be ended. We are of opinion it should have ceased to exist long ago, bur. the Liberals in Parliament have acted so that they can never be accused of disloyalty in connection with the pact they entered into; their allegiance to a distasteful alliance has been beyond suspicion. While electioneering has been practiced by their ally, they have given no indication of the future of liberalism, and this loyalty to a compact actually prompted the Reform thought that a permanent coalition was possible and probable; the Reform line was cast but there was neither liberal rise or bite. Liberalism has emerged uncom laminated from what must have proved an almost unbearable party truce; It has been chastened and purified by its trials and experiences, and its first voice of freedom is hold and strong, resonant of the true; the good old liberal spirit that brca'thed in the strongest and most beneficent, days of Ballance and Scddun, and a definite progressive radical policy is promised. We expect to see Reform reversing and camouflaging the policy it has pursued right up to this day, but New Zealanders have all the experiences of Reform they need. From the days when it proclaimed that, it would unearth from Ministerial pigeon holes the sins of liberalism; when it yelled “settlement and still more settlement”; when Mr. Massey posed as a Labourite and Labour was promised emancipation from (trusts, combines and land thieves, the people were heodwinked, cajoled and cheated into fondling their political enemy, but there is neither misunderstandings or misgivings to-day. Reform produced nothng from pigeon holes; there has been the reversal of a land settlement policy, and labour to-day knows just where it stands with Masseyism and its attendant shipping combines, meat trusts and profiteering gangs. This journal has consistently urged that labour and production should bo inseparable, while Masseyism has made them enemies, in opposite camps; but Chambers of Commerce, and organised employers arc frankly admitting that disaster can only result from estrangement between farmers and their men; between workers and their employers, and they are inviting labour to confer with a view to establishing a friendship and co-operation whereby the utmost in production can be achieved; whereby contentment, happiness and industrial peace may take the place of strikes and lockouts'; whereby the stream of people off the land may be reversed, and the now rotting, empty, once flourishing and happy homes of sueessful farmers may be rescued from decay and once more become (Scenes of happy contentment. The Ballance-Sed-don. policy was one of a definite pro-' gressivo and radical nature; its increase of settlement was the amazement of the Empire; its impetus to production raised New Zealand from the infant to the manhood stage; its encouragement of markets for the products of the land raised the value of land and gave to primary production a dignity and independence it never before possessed: it wiped the sundowner and swag-earirer, so dear to the lory heart, clean off! the land- 1 scape, and gave them an opportunity in life, and wo predict with utmost confidence that the unanimously adopted resolution of the Liberal caucus to institute a definite progressive radical policy means a rapid return to the days that made New Zealand’s prosperity possible