The Daily News. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1911. VIRULENT CRITICISM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 139, 7 December 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1911. VIRULENT CRITICISM.

Cr.'ticism is good, and it is a necessity to political cleanliness. The clean politician does not fear criticism; the politician who is not clean protests violently. The Press makes politicians and mars them. Wthout the Press it would be almost impossible for many men now in the House of Representatives to occupy their places. Criticism is,of several kinds—there is the criticism of the critic and the criticism 'of the enemy, who sees no good thing in any single act of any single soldier in the opposing army, from general to drummer. The Press is often surprised at its power. Even obscure prints frequently wield un-thought-of influence. Tha Press does not mirror public opinion, but often makes opinion for the public. The public is often enough apt to lean heavily on a man—or a paper—for its ideas. This being without dispute, the man who loads public thought should be spotlessly honest, fair beyond dispute, reliable without question. Sir Robertson Nicoll says what the Press should be in these words: "Absolutely reliable, fully informed, absolutely fair—and enthralled to no politician." The Wellington paper known as the "Dominion" has essayed the task of forming' a'/new public opinion. It has probably succeeded very well, and the monument it has erected is hardly one of which the builders may be proud. It is not strictly reliable, it is not fully informed, it is not absolutely fair, and it is enthralled to one politician. The whole object of its existence is to exalt as national heroes every man belonging to a party and to condemn utterly any man who is in antagonism to it. The personality of an individual is of no concern to it. He is food for attack —violent, prejudiced, malevolent attack—if he is honest enough to show antagonism to the alleged "Reform" Party. We concede herc : that in the ranks of that party there are some of the brightest intellects in New Zealand political life, but wo do not concede that it is because they be-' long to the "Reform" Party they are bright men, or that the mere fact of belonging to the Government Party is proof of political debasement. The "Dominion" newspaper hns, in common with every newspaper in New Zealand, the right to fight for its one cause in its leading columns. But it is the single example in Xcw Zealand of a paper which despises the canons by exuding its political bile into its news columns. We are well aware that the persistence of thi- di-i-hiirge of bile iia- its ed'ect on the extremely large number of people who are so willing to allow more acute brains to think for them. There is a grave danger about this biting, un-

scrupulous criticism of every man who adheres to a party. We are not at all sure that the men who represent the people in Parliament are the best men available, whatever party these individuals may adhere to. Many a man whose purposes are pure and who.intends to seok election because he wishes to work for the people, hesitates to throw himself into the vortex. The able, thoughtful, high-principled man is, in almost every instance, an unobtrusive, sensitive man. The kind of verbal violence indulged in-by the Wellington "Dominion" is calculated to narrow the field of candidates down to the level of those few men who have no sensibilities and who regard politics in the same way that the "hoi polloi" regard a prize fight, although, to be frank, the average prizefight is a much fairer contest than a political one. Such papers insist ably enough that the people of New Zealand should regard every political candidate Dot on their side as a pestilence; they ask the people to believe that the majority of men now in the New Zealand House of Representatives are utterly unworthy to be there. In assuming this malevolent attitude they also necessarily accuse I the people who have sent the majority I of men to the House of being party to [ a system of fraud and chicanery. As a very great man once said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." The people all the time i in the bulk love to criticise their servI ants and to see them criticised, but the people do not believe, nor will they ever believe, that mere adherence to any party is either holiness .or damnation. Any method that persistently accuses I the people of a country of dishonesty in maintaining a corrupt Government is excusable if those employing the method are sure that the people themselves are corrupt. If the Ward Government is corrupt the people are corrupt. In the political Gomorrah the "Dominion" can I And no Lot. And the regeneration of the ! majority can be effected hy the simple : process of demolishing Gomorrah and of j replacing its inhabitants by the holy I ones who have battered at the gates I for the fifth of a century! The man i who in the future may elect to offer his services to New Zealand may well hesitate when he knows that his quite honest efforts will be misconstrued by critics of the "Dominion" order into a nefarious design on the rights of the people. No self-respecting man desires to offer 1 himself as the target for a weapon used I with unexampled malevolence and whose wielders show no fairness or pity to the ; enemy.