The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1943. BEFORE THE ELECTION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 198, 21 August 1943, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1943. BEFORE THE ELECTION

"pHE last general election campaign in New Zealand began under the shadow of Hitler's threat to Czechoslovakia. 'Nominations closed after the late Mr. Chamberlain had returned from Munich, bringing •what he described as "peace with honour," although but a few days later one Winston Churchill was heard in the Commons declaring that Britain had suffered a "total, unmitigated defeat." However, the great majority of New Zealanders at that time wished to believe Mr. Chamberlain rather than Mr. Churchill, and after public expressions of thanksgiving they concentrated their attention on an election campaign in which much was heard of social security, and of the possibility of "insulating" New Zealand, economically, from the rest of the world. A visitor to New Zealand at that time might well have remarked on a prevalent assumption among New Zealanders that the current of world events, though its course was unpredictable, would kindly pass them by; and that nothing mattered so much as the issue of the impending election, whether the Labour Government should be re-elected or whether it should be defeated. The falsity of that assumption needs now no emphasis. Within a year every one of the questions which had been election issues had shrunk into insignificance. It had become clear that New Zealand could not be "insulated." Not social security, but national security, became the paramount need.

All this would hardly be worth recalling were it not for indications that the short-sighted insularity which characterised the election campaign of five years ago is still influential, and with far smaller excuse. There are indications that despite all that has happened since 1938, and is still happening, and despite the vast uncertainties of the future, an attempt will be made in the forthcoming campaign to interest the people in purely domestic issues, to pretend that the chief problems of the Dominion in the next three years will be problems arising in New Zealand, and capable of being mastered and solved by political action in' New Zealand. This pretence, of course, suits the political parties, for it enables each of them to assert that it knows how to solve such problems, and will do so—if only the people will vote for it. The idea that New Zealand's post-war future may be shaped far less by debates and legislation in Wellington than by peace treaties and agreements made abroad is at once flattering to the politicians' selfesteem, and more difficult to convey to the people, than is the familiar idea that a political party has the wisdom, and ; needs only the power, to make everybody comfortable and secure.

What are the basic facts which truly concern our country afethis time? First, this war is not over, nor New Zealand's part in it. 3?he strain of the war effort will not diminish, but increase. thousands of our men are abroad, and none can say when,it "rail be possible for them to return. More than nine thousand of them languish in the prison camps of the enemy. Does .-any poMticianrthink that any domestic political issue will, for one-moment Intthe campaign, Seem important to the next-of-kin of these men-? Secondly, there is the fact that Japan's assault on Pearl Harbour ended an era in the Pacific, and the nature of the new era has still to<-be determined. In this new era New Zealand has to find its place, to form new relationships, to undertake new responsibilities. Its future status in the Pacific will depend in large measure upon the vision of our leaders, on the courage with which they impress on the people their duties, and on the vigour and skill with which they represent the Dominion's interests at the appropriate times and places.

The notion, already to be discerned, that the future security of this country will be automatically determined by peace treaties, the old notion that the Dominion's material welfare is assured, and that : the main task of the Government is to redistribute the national wealth— these are false. New Zealand's welfare after the war cannot be promoted, any more than it was before the war, or is now, in disregard : of, or in dissociation from, the policies of other countries. The maintenance of the national income at a high and increasing level is not assured. ■"Progress" is not automatic. All will depend on thought and work, and on leadership. It. is by their awareness of these matters, by their attitude towards them, by their competence in discussing, them, that the parties and the-men who will shortly be seeking our votes should be chiefly judged.