HEARTS AND HEADS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 165, 14 July 1932, Page 6

HEARTS AND HEADS.

If a foreign observer judged New Zealand by some of the phrases that are hurtling around he might think our social conditions bore some resemblance to those in the Kingdom of Naples in the days of Gladstone's famous denunciation. ''Slavery," "slave camps,'' "serfdom," "feudalism" and other terms of exaggeration arc being used with a freedom that illustrates afresh the tyranny of words and phrases. This, of course, is not to say that everything that the Government is doing is wise; our readers will acquit us of any desire to gloss over its mistakes. Wc respect the sympathy that provoked the criticism at last night's meeting of the Takapuna Council, though we may point out that the Labour Department's statement to-day puts a different complexion on the subject. In such cases a little investigation might modify indignation. Nor can it be denied that the scheme of supplying labour to farmers is open to grave abuse. Well-to-do farmers should not take advantage of the scheme, and it was never meant that subsidised labour should oust men in regular employment.

This needs to be said, and with emphasis, and attention has to be called again to the i'act that the Government's organisation of. relief is yet far from efficient. But it must also be said that there are still 100 many New Zealanders who have not realised how very exceptional are the circumstances with which the Government, local bodies and private charities arc grappling, and who do not make allowance for the inevitability of abuses in any system of relief. Their criticism is mostly destructive. Whatever the Government docs is wrong. The Government, indeed, can indulge its sense of humour by comparing what it is urged to do with what is said when this is done. It is urged to settle the land, but there is a howl when it produces the ten-acre scheme. It is accused of permitting waste in subsidising the clearing of roadsides, but there is another outcry when it puts men into camp. What the people of this country must understand is that it is impossible for life to go on as before. Our national income is gravely diminished, and by some means or other the community has to make it go round so that no oiie will starve. It is ridiculous to expect the old standard of living to be maintained. New measures have to be planned and introduced, and it requires only a modicum of common sense to realise that here and there blunders will be made, misfits will occur, and the selfishness of human nature will assert itself. If the country were to wait for a plan to which no objection could be raised it would wait indefinitely, and in the meantime (he unemployed would starve. What it has to do is to make plans that seem to have a reasonable prospect of success, and go ahead with them with all possible vigour. In times like these, as in others, policy should be founded on the wise saying that all good plans come from the heart, but they thonU go round by; the head.