PARTIES AND PROSPECTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 May 1920, Page 2

PARTIES AND PROSPECTS.

This, Sir Joseph Ward hastened to point out, did not reveal any inherent defect in the principle of proportional representation. Tt merely showed that the system had been unhappily applied and that too great a demand had been ma.de upon the intelligence of a section of the community. Tt would be quite sufficient to require the voter to express preference for the number of candidates to be clectod or at least for three or four more. The chance of a tenth preference being effective, even when five candidates wore to lie elected, was so extremely remote there was no practical purpose to serve by demanding its expression. The, multiplication of preferences, however, though it evidently had increased the number, impaired the accuracy of the returns. The New Parliament must be taken to represent the will of the electors who recorded valid votes. Sir Joseph's own impression was that the Labor Party was in the ascendance in New South Wales and that with a growing sense of responsibility it would modify many of its extreme views. Its leader, the new Premier, was a sane and capable man of whom everyone spoke well, and if he conldc arry on lie probably would gather strength with the development of his policy.

BACK TO NEW ZEALAND. Sir Joseph, courteously but quite firmly, declined to he drawn on New Zealand politics. He had gone to Australia as a private citizen and had refused to discuss with the numerous journalists—many of them, by the way, New Zealanders—who were good enough to call upon him, what had been. happening in the Dominion during the previous three or four months. Tie liad returned as a private citizen and lie was going to preserve the same attitude here. He could say, however, that his trip to Australia, like all hi.<i other trips, had made him realise that New Zealand was a much blessed country and a very excellent. place to be able to call home. Governments would come and go, probably at shorter intervals than had been the case during the last two or three decades, and some would be better thai! others. But no Government could wholly retard the progress of the country or long impede the purpose and the enterprise of its people. In a month or so he would be starting out on a visit to the Old Country, where he had business calling for bis attention, and he ..light be away till the end of the year, but already ho was contemplating the pleasure of his home coming. ACTION—NOT TALK. "We must really do the things we have promised to do instead of only talking about them. Air routes must be established here and abroad; air lighthouses, directional wireless, telephones, landing grounds, the rapid dissemination of meteorological information from and to machines in the air and between stations must be established without delay. "The people of this country have been told to expect these things. They understand better than their rulers the necessity of prompt action, and they will not, forgive those who fail to carry it out. Let us see to it that no old prejudices, no old-fashioned notions, 110 musty doctrines stand in the way of drastic reform. Only so can we keep our place in the sun and secure to our race the blessings of freedom and of peace."