The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30. POLITICS v. HUMANITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 221, 30 December 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30. POLITICS v. HUMANITY.

A detached person viewing the politics of any modern country sees that the good of the people is not considered to be so important a matter as the harassing or destruction of a political party. In Britain itself, whose Parliament is the pattern for almost every existing civilised country, the late election was not a matter arranged by mutual friends of the people, but purely in antagonism to party. Political parties have no common ground of work. To the Liberal the finest gentleman, the greatest philanthropist, the most perfect humanist is totally damned because he is a Unionist; the peer of most pronounced goodness is utterly bad because of the accident of his birth, and so on. Privately, the most

uncompromising Radical may be the friend of the bluest Tory of them all. but because of political antagonism they are unable to meet pn a common ground in the common cause which the people | permit them to work for. Modern politics is mostly waste of time and money. The value of a politician is believed to consist in, his adherence to the cut-and-dried platform of a party. The reform fathered by any party will be fought poisonously by its opposition, not because opposition is personally, or humanly antagonistic, but just because it is opposition. A studious political economist nutshells the modern idea thus: "The science of politics is the mere guidebook of etiquette. Such a person is a gentleman—therefore a Tory. A Socialist is perhaps picturesque and lamusing; a little naughty, but almost respectable. But a Radical—there is the enemy! There is no common ground. Political warfare is partisan, personal, pitiful and vulgar. It persists in the delusion that the people exist for the benefit of politicians and not the politicians for the people. Not long, ago that fine old scientist, Dr. Russell Wallace, showed with all the conclusion his trained intellect was capable of, the utter wastefulness and absurdity of political bickering and quarrelling while the real issues of life were unattended to. He held) that the-creation of a sound posterity was the one great task that statesmen should set themselves. He gently chided alleged reformers for believing that education should be regarded merely as a means for passing examinations, holding that the school was the basis of national life, the greatest influence in national evolution and the chief instrument in the formation of character. All men who see further than the "ayes" and "noes" 1 lobbies are ready to acknowledge that life should be less bound by the heathenish ideal of struggle and battle, personal glorification and egotism. To talk to politicians of a universal brotherhood is to invite contumely. To advise any other method than the one which is a daily scramble for "the loaves and fishes" makes the average politician regard one as a (hopeless faddist. Organisation in essence is preparation for fight. Organisation of capital and of labor are not instituted to bring about universal brotherhood, but for class warfare. Professor Wallace shows the evil of party organisation that sets up determined antagonism in the following.— "I cannot think why the Government does not exert more force to see that the enactments of its excellent Small Holdings Act «Te carried out. Unless the county council is composed of Liberals, nothing is done, or at best very little. In Cornwall and in other places where the Act is courageously applied, we hear of success, a splendid success. Wliy is there not a like success throughout the length and breadth of England? It is only because the selfishness of bad landlords and the subservient cowardice of county councils make the Act a dead letter. These people defy the law of the land. They should be made to obey. Imagine the folly and the madness of preventing cultivation of the land by small holders! Is this patriotism and Imperialism? Well, it is the work of the Imperialist party. What a blind set of men! The best interests of the nation are bound up in small holdings. By this Act small holdings are made a great success in many parts of the country; and yet, saying that the Act is not a good one, they oppose it and prevent the cultivation of the soil."

Those are truths that apply with equal force to every part of the Empire as to England. The units of a nation morally exist to help one another, not for party conflict and organised war. The ideal nation combines from its Parliament down to its individual peasants to make national life a replica of the best kind of family life, but there is no ideal nation, and only an odd statesman here and there who works for the ideal. The goal of all effort, political, social and economic, should be te so improve the environment of the individual that he shall become the best kind of citizen. A nation where the physical, moral and intellectual standard of its citizens was of the best type would have no "problems," no parties, and no antagonism. The beginning of every reform is not in the forum, but in the individual home. Party warfare and fighting organisation will never effect the reforms that quarrelling leaders allege they are pledged j to.