LIBERALISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 219, 15 September 1932, Page 6

LIBERALISM.

NEED FOR A REVIVAL.

(To the Editor.) My head reels when I think of all the cures I have listened to for this depression. Everyone seems to know the way out, but hardlv anyone knows the facts. What lies behind it'? WJiy is trade so bad in a world filled •with abundant raw material? Has the capitalist failed and are we just waiting for Russia to take over? These are examples of questions arising everywhere, but no one has yet voiced the opinion to me that -wo are overSocialistic, that wo 'have left behind us the old parties and taken on the role of the Socialist under new guises. I recommend every thinking man to read Sir Ernest J, P. Benn's latest book, "Honest Doubt." He is well fitted to attack the problems which are in front of the world to-day, and he "ives many common-sense ideas about the "price of politics." He says of to-day's politics: "As the pace quickens memory grows shorter and vision dims. Policy, aim and purpose degenerate into matters of immediacy; both the past and the future tend to be forgotten and ignored. In the political world the Liberal party has a new policy in a different coloured cover every year, the Conservative party has no policy, and the Socialists leave their literary colleagues to continue the quest of t, definition of their beliefs, while the party itself, like the modern burglar 'with his motor sir, carries on gaily the game of smash and "rab." Sir Ernest Benn has also said that all the world tries to copy Britain, and when therefore she sets the example in piling up public expenditure, other countries fall°hito the same error. Yes, I think there is need for a revival of Liberalism; the old Liberalism, The world, has unfortunately copied England wid it must pay the price of extravagance, fn the last thirty years British capitalism has given to the Exchequer twenty-four thousand million pounds. Is this not indicative of the way -which her industries have to fight to iiold their markets against foreign traders who ire not so heavily taxed? And the pity of t is that the world follows Britain's lead. Sfes, we must get back to the Gladstonian view >f finance, to the old Liberalism which has been crushed in the first third of this century. It may be a long fight, but we must face facts. It is disaster to go on the way w$ ire doing. I.A.M.