LET US ASSERT OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 177, 28 July 1934, Page 8

LET US ASSERT OURSELVES.

Your leader of tlie 26th contains tie -J following sentence: "It is an extraordinary way in which to conduct the business of the State, but until the country asserts itself, and demands to know what money it is required to find, not half-way through the year, but at the beginning of it, apparently there will be no improvement." I quite agree, but what I wish to know is how "the country can assert itself." The "country" has only one legal way of "asserting itself," and that is by means of the ballot. This is kept carefully out of our reach while this "extraordinary" way of doing business is going on. The miserable truth is that the country cannot legally "assert itself. Electors are now realising the full value that tliey are receiving in return for the "blank cheque" which they gave to the Coalition party in 1931. A country that is feeble and shiftless enough to give blank political cheques is not likely to have sufficient spirit to assert itself, even if it had the opportunity. N.Z.