NEW ZEALAND'S MADNESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 46, 24 February 1931, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND'S MADNESS.

It is over four years since the "Star" first permitted me to point out where Governmental, local body and private extravagance would land New Zealand. We are now in the morass we made for ourselves. Instead of a futile "I told you so," I will tell the people of this country something which will be unpleasant to hear, but whioh they cannot deny without confirming my conclusions. The English breed needs the discipline of tradition to keep it sane. Without that strong, if impalpable, restraining factor it loses, largely, its sense of proportion. Its ambitions become fanciful and divorced from a basis of reality. Many of its acts become fantastic when measured by conventional standards of sanity. Its free-' dom becomes a tyranny of irresponsibility. All its geese are swans, and its values are such as pervade the dreams of the dopedebauched. How else can we explain the intemperateness of some of our doings in recent years? The appalling recklessness in soldier settlement with its attendant loss of millions; the flooding of the country with town-bred immigrants, many of them destined to be failures here as they were at Home; the mad rush for the development of local areas, already doomed to decay; the myopic pretence that land must necessarily be more valuable from year to year, when, owing to the machinations of speculators in high places, the rates laid on it make it a liability and not an asset; the sentimental absurdity which makes no discrimination between the genuine and the merely opportune when granting "advances to settlers"; the acceptance of the nightmare doctrine that it is the wage or salary and not the work done for it whioh is the measure of a man's worth; the want of courage in local bodies that permits default in rates; the wasteful, grandiose schemes for electrical power; the building of railways destined to he a drain on the country before ever a sod is turned; the elevation of commonplace politicians to the status of statesmen; the petty justice which practically condones lying and thieving. These things art evidence of a demoralisation approaching dementia. To ask New Zealanders to believe themselves dishonest would he like asking one who is colour blind to observe the beautiful gradations of the tints in the cloud/i between dawn and sunrise. We have no true perspective of values. We are bolstering up artificial standards for which we shall have to pay in perpetuity out of capital. Unli-s we come to our senses and find ourselves strong enough to dig out the rottenness which extends from. Governments that cheat the taxpayer to the pitiful creature that cheats his fellow, this country will never enjoy a healthy prosperity. COUNTK1 7 FIRST.