The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 29, 1920. THE DECLINE OF GOVERNMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3590, 29 September 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 29, 1920. THE DECLINE OF GOVERNMENT.

With which is incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino News,"

The powerlessuess of Governments is, perhaps the most arresting feature in current history. They have not the power to help themselves to maintain law and order, or even common decency amongst the people who elected them for that purpose. Not even in the common crimes against society, on occasions, dare they interfere with law-breakers for fear of ruffling the temper of a • faction or gang whose proper place is the common prison. Go from one social extreme to the other and all the way are found sections here, men there, snapping their thumbs at their .Government. At both ends and all the way between there is defiance of the law and worse than no effort is made to enforce the law enacted for the suppression of such defiance. Systematic robbery extends the whole way between the social poles; there are hold-ups, stand-and-delivers, backed by threats and actions no less criminal 'than those practised by older Dick Turpins who took the law in their own hands, and were outlawed in consequence. Why are not men who take the law in their own hands to-day as persistent lawbreakers—garrotters and thieves—not outlawed as they should be? The answer to this question has not been thought out by most people; they are feeling the results of widespread crime and they are filled with ing resentment which unfits them for calmly investigating and locating the source of trouble with a view to its removal. They are rather condoning the sins of others that they may participate in similar crimes themselves, pitting their wits against the wits of a more hardened criminal gang. Governments have plausibly talked about duty and fair play to people who know nothing of duty, fair play or even common honesty. They assume a bold attitude to the miscreant crowd commencing with threats of Impending punishments, and denunciations accompanied with conferences, committees and hoards of trade, bnt they invariably fizzle out with a beggarly suppalpation of which no self-respect-ing government, could adopt and still maintain a semblance of dignity and self-respect. Governments are apparently toying with crime, and with criminals who prosecute their deadly work amongst the people knowing well that their government is muzzled and cannot bite seriously in the pretended mauling that occasionally happens. Government is deserted by both extremes of the social and industrial body politic, and the defection extends much too near the middle from both extremes to permit of any degree of security to be felt in the centre., There are combines, trusts and syndicate's working down from one end, and labour strikes, go-slows and hold-ups working up from the other and it is heaven help the masses between them. Are the people of the whole civilised world dissatisfied with the various constitutions adopted, the forms of government they have selected, and the men they h’avc elected to make and administer the laws? The British Government, is nothing more than a buffer between two gangs of tyrants, labour on one side, insatiable greed on the other, and yet those tyrants joined with decent people in setting up that Government, jNeither nest of tyrants would hesitate a moment in cutting the legislative painter if it suited their vile purposes to do so. It is a deplorable state of affairs to have; as in Britain, a Government merely tolerated as a buffer between two multiple fiends that are awaiting and endeavouring to engineer the opportunity to fly at each others’* throats. But are New Zealanders much better placed from a similar point of view? It is probably correct to say that producers, traders and workers are having millions of their good, well-or ill, earned money levied as texatipn and spent with little or no good effect on law courts, boards of trade, profiteering committees, industrial conferences and Parliamentary and other committees, and yet the master key hag been discover-

cd to nowhere but to the pons asiuorum, which mostly leads to confusion worse confounded without immaculate erudite and honourable guidance_ Grovernmonts are languishing, being rendered” ridiculous, losing their prestige. meeting with some degree of contempt simply because the guiding power behind them is vitiated and faulty. The impotency in compelling order is not peculiar to any govern- 1 ment and people. By a systematic I culture of commercial and financial cajolery efforts are made to mane the masses believe that wheat has a just value of two dollars a bushel one day and a value of less than one dollar the next, while the explanation is that a kink has disturbed the cornering of wheat. From the other pole of i tyranny over the masses is observed an industrial extravaganza being en- i acted, a comedy to wealthy people, a tragedy to the poor. Shipping is-held up because ship stewards differ with ship stokers about the employment of a certain cook, and this extravaganza is played with all the usual scenery, paraphernalia and picketing as though the basis on which rests the whole superstructure of labour had been menaced with dynamite bombs. Has labour lost all sense of proportion of what is proper, seemly and honest that men should launch upon such an insane revel in displaying the power it can exercise in ridiculing law and order, and in making a show of the devilish weapon it can wield in punishing and in bringing distress to people generally? The public are left in no doubt about what trusts and combines are seeking, and they would like to know what it really is that labour wants. "The Moana cook episode, the Hundy strike, the State mine stoppage, are awaiting elucidation. Ordi-, nary man is cursing the causes of the deprivation and suffering forced upon his wife and children without any beg pardons, or b3 r -your-leaves. When a principle is at stake men will endure much to save it, but the insane acts of little irresponsible gangs arc insufferable because inexcusable, and the universal feeling is that they should be promptly suppressed by the people's government. Governments, with the laws they make, are generally flouted because they are not willing to muzzle exploiting and profiteering trusts and combines on one hand, and dare not exert the force of law to suppress the .ridiculous, ill-conceived extravaganzas that stupid gangs of workers are enacting on the other. The trust cult is seeking to dominate the world by acquisition of the world’s wealth through commercial and industrial exploitation, and, for want of a frankly stated policy, from the extravanganza performers, it seems apparent that they are after world domination through revolution and seizure of the wealth that the other party has already accumulated. The fatal blunder the extravagandists have to escape from is that they cannot all be bosses, or kings of labour; the Trotsky’s and Lenin’s of New Zealand labour would be compelled to enroll every worker in the labour army and put them to work just where and when they are most desired by their over-lords, for has not Trotsky decreed that “man is rather a lazy animal?”