A NEW POLITICAL SLOGAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 155, 4 July 1927, Page 6

A NEW POLITICAL SLOGAN.

After the war a League of Youth was formed in England. Its founders said that "old men" had brought about the conflict and directed it from a safe distance, and that they would blunder along the eaine road again if they were not prevented. The league died, as might have been expected, for its inherent weakness was that its members couldn't remain youthful Nevertheless, there is room now for a similar league, which might include that great legion whose members liko to consider themselves young. In all the talk about the unwisdom of giving flappers' the vote, there is no suggestion of limiting the voting age at "the other end." In our own country, for example, a man becomes too old at sixty-five to run a Government Department, or e\en to work in one, and a judge mav judge no more after seventy, but a man (or a woman) may vote at ninety-seven. A man may still be Prime Minister at seventy and make laws which the judges, though born in the same vear, are held too old to administer. As for the "House of Lords," a man is positively unwelcome there until he has passed the irresponsible sixties. Our political scientists (if politics is a science, which many deny) might consider whether, if a "youn" person is too young to hold political opinions, an old person has not held his too long, and whether, if a "young person" (having little property) is irresponsible, an old person (having acquired property) does not hold it in too great esteem and so retard the progress of the countrv. Even the names of our political parties have lost their magic. The Reform partv, far from meaning to reform anything, is itself in need of reformation. The Labour party does not contain one-half of the people who "labour," nor do all its members "labour." The Liberal 'partv has the most enduring name, but contains too few Liberals. But the old names cling. Let us at the next election at least have "a new slogan. To the respective party orpanisers the writer suggests the enormous "pulling power" of "Xo Votes For the Old 'Uns." —OROXGO.