The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1911. PUBLIC MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 50, 21 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1911. PUBLIC MEN.

Many men are called to public positions in New Zealand by popular vote or the vote of colleagues, because they are the only men available for positions that go a-begging. The reason is not far to seek. We may ask ourselves why the brainiest, the most representative, and the best educated men do not, as is the case in oldcT countries, offer themselves as candidates for specific public duties, honorary or otherwise, but largely honorary. The chief necessity for a public man—the parliamentarian, the municipal politician, the board member, etc. —is leisure. In other countries the majority of men holding unpaid or poorly paid representative positions have both leisure and much cash. In New Zealand there are numerous men who could have leisure if they would, and certainly have a fair share of cash. In many eases in New Zealand men with competencies, although entitled to the leisure that a competency ensures, are still smitten with the dollar-gathering disease, and are unable to see the point that a public which hasgiven them their competencies is entitled to some service in return. The late Mr. Tisch had a very true conception of the duties of a local public man, and he returned manyfold the benefits the public had initially conferred on him in making him modestly independent of work. New Zealand has hundreds of men of brains, means and ability whose sole ambition seems to be to amass all the coin that can be amassed and to ignore all public matters, unless interest in public matters returns a cash dividend. Thus the field in national and municipal politics is extremely narrow. The people are practically infallible in the matter of selection if left alone, and therefore in the majority of cases it may be assumed that the best men offering are selected. But the best men offering are' not always the best men to be obtained. If the most prominent men in New Zealand conceived it to be their duty to devote their spare time to the public who have made them well off, there would be fewer unsuitable men holding public positions. Parliament itself might benefit, and local bodies certainly would.