Sir Bernard Freyberg

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 325, 14 September 1945, Page 5

Sir Bernard Freyberg

HE selection of Sir Bernard Freyberg to succeed Sir Cyril Newall was one of those happy decisions that democracies should not expect too often. To begin with, it was.a violent break from tradition: a break that has been made once in Australia but never before in New Zealand. In the second place it was a departure that had to appeal to the King himself as well as to the Government and people of New Zealand (who in a case of this kind could not be consulted). Therefore it was a bold decision politically. For democracy means consultation before anything else-free decisions by a free people after’ free and frank discussion. It requires that no important steps should be taken in its name without its knowledge and approval; and it would be: artificial and false to say that this was the King’s appointment and not the Government’s -that the King still chooses his representatives or wishes to. He accepts the recommendations of his advisers who, almost in this case alone, may neither consult the people nor publicly fly kites. Obviously, therefore, it is easier to follow tradition than to make history, since no one objects to the first course and no Government in 105 years has taken the second. Historically-let us say it again-New Zealand had no right, and no ordinary reason, to expect such an appointment and must still count itself lucky that its Government decided to risk an experiment; for experiment it is at both ends of the Empire chain. Not to see it in that light is to lose the truth in platitudinous moonshine — the constitutional truth, for we of course say experiment in that sense only. To call Sir Bernard an experiment personally would be to call our Second Division an experiment, and to forget that the two will: go down together in history.