LIBERTY AND PROGRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 241, 12 October 1933, Page 6

LIBERTY AND PROGRESS.

Wo congratulate tlio T.U.C. very sincerely on its return to a belief in liberty and its rebuke of "any attempt to supersede Parliament" (says the I London "Observer"). The most dependable eon- | version* are those wrought by painful experience and avowed with some embarrassment. Labour sees dictatorship to-day as a game too many can play at. Trade unionism may be submerged in one country just as effectually as capitalism in another. liv. no State whose polities have been adventurous, lias it emerged a gainer. The very seed of Fascism lias been the menace of Communism. Well may Labour return to liberty and the bnllot box as its true allies! That "efficient government is no substitute for selfgovernment" expresses the whole pith of our British spirit and history- Liberty is not the Alpha and Omega of political well-being. It must Tie flanked by training- and organisation, and supplemented by purpose. As Matthew Arnold said, it is "a good lior?o io ride —but to ride somewhere." But. unless all the. continuous centuries of our national existence are a delusion, it is to liberty that the, community must trust for its fullest measure of lifie, for tho spontaneous energising of its members, for "tlio free play of its best minds and the unfettered development of its strongest characters." Only under those conditions can wo liavc. tlio natural growth and experiment by which progress is sustained. Socialism and Communism cannot pursue, their ideal collective, purposes without sacrificing vitality to mechanism. Their philosophy, which begins' by giving- their ftall-fed citizen liis task and his rations, leads inevitably to his suppression as a free political agent.