The Press Monday, August 11, 1924. The Political Situation.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18148, 11 August 1924, Page 8

The Press Monday, August 11, 1924. The Political Situation.

It is more than six weeks since Parliament met, and the proceedings have included tiro lengthy debates covering the whole field'of administration and legislation. The Opposition has thus had ample opportunity to give the publie conclusive reasons, if such reasons existed at all, why there ought to be a change of Government. Yet we are keeping well within the facts when we say that the Opposition has so signally failed to do this that it is extremely doubtful whether any member of the public can remember a single point that any Opposition speaker lias made. Exeept by those whose profession or hobby it is to study the proceedings of Parliament very closely, hardly anything of the past six weeks, of debate is remembered except Mr Downie Stewart's trenchant and entertaining replies to Mr Wilford's ludicrous essays in financial criticism. We do not suppose anyone will have the hardihood to deny this, giving Masons for the denial; and surely this is ft striking and significant fact. Mr Massey has been in office for twelve years, and if there wer© anything in the shape of a well-grounded public dislike of his policy and administration the Opposition would have been able to direct a damaging fire upon the Government and to keep public opinion very hot and active. If there had developed any strong public sentiment in favour of a-line of political aetion (other than the Labour forty's) which t'ould not be followed without a change of Government, the Opposition could have stirred the country from oils end to the other. Yet we hare before us the plain fact that the public is paying very little attention to politics or Parliament, and is quite content to have Mr Massey continue at the head of affairs as usual. In winding up tiie (debate on the Financial Statement on Friday night, Mr Massey delivered a speech which shows that lie realises that there is nothing in the political situation to trouble him. Ho had Uo difficulty in disposing of the criticisms which had been directed against the Budget, or in showing that the Government is attending to the current needs of the Dominion.' If 'there was nothing in his speech pointing to a spectacular policy, this is because the condition of the country is <mch thai no spectacular.' policy is required. During the recess Mr Wilfprd and his'friends succeeded in persuading some people that the session would bo a very exciting one, and there was .even eotate expectation that a dissolution was likely. It is now apparent, however, that a dissolution is out of the question,- and there appears to be no reason why this Parliament should not run its normal course. It is sometimes Btiid that the Government'i strength is in ths weakness of the Opposition, aid it must be allowed that the Government docs gain a good deal from the Opposition's -want of skill and ideas; : Yet if there "were any substantial fault, in Mr Massey's administration and legislation, no, very great skill would be needed to exploit it. * The fact which, .emerges from the proceedings of the House since June "is that the Government is honest and capable aud >rell suited to the actual nseds of the Dominion.

Restless Canada.

The doubts, hesitations, and professad hesitations of Canada on Imperial policy are beginning to be tedious. Mr Mackenzie King protests so consistently against this or that step by the Colonial or Foreign Office that we begin to wonder on each occasion to which particular group; at home ho is addressing Mittself. • The Liberalism •£ Canada has this, in common with the Liberalism of . our own Dominion that politics are more • to it than statesmanship. Yet Mr King's position , is an extremely delicate one.,- Canada, though wo think of it here afe a single Dominion, and though it is in fact a single Dominion, is anything but a united country socially, economically, and racially. Apart from the fact that a quarter of its people speak French, and, when they are not especially thinking Canadian, think French, it is to be remembered that the extreme East hardly knows the Middle and the West, and that the extreme "West prides itself on possessing most of. those characteristics that the rest of the Dominion lacks. British Coluinbia is as eager to be English and not American as most of the other provinces are to be Americas, Canadian brand, rather than Old WorM of any type. ;■ Aiid there is a great deal more than this mental detachment between British Columbia and, tie other provinces economically. Geographically Vancouver is the outlet for all territory as far east as Central Alberta, but ia fact it geta little of the wheat-lands trade owing to the fact that wheat moves to Montreal at a much lower .cost por ton-mile than to the Pacific—the railways say, because tlic mountain sections of-the line are so costly to maintain; the British Columbians, because the railways have contrived, in various political and financial ways, to [ force g?ain into'the • •'f.chann«l that ! ''gives the longest haul." And there j js a similar rivalry, amounting at tiwiw to. a tipathy, between tho (

Prairie and the Maritime Provinces. We do not always realise in New Zealand that Canada is not one country geographically from Quebec to the Rocky Mountains. Between the East a;:d West of this vast urea there is a stretch of country neither cultivated nor cultivable —a great mass of rock and scrub and lake; and the effect of that has been to accentuate in Canada the political and economic differences that everyone knows to exist between the East and Middle-West of the United states. In the States settlement has spread West: in the Dominion it has been carried West or had to make a big jump. The prairie population of Canada is not the overflow from the East, but a new mass that has been brought from Europe and carried right past the East, and right over this barren, divide, or that has moved in a northerly direction from the TJiiited States. And while this ia an agricultural, free-trade mass, the people of the Eastern provinces are manufacturers and protectionists. In the extreme East also there ia a opecial problem again, partly political and social, but j primarily economic, the reality of which j can best be conveyed by the statement [ that 200,000 people from ?few Brunswick, Xova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island crossed last year to the United States. It is well to remember when wo road 2sir Mackenzie King's sermons oil independence that he lias a difficult congregation, and that liis chief hope of holding it together is to keep all minds on a Satan who would entangle , them i:x the wickedness of Europe.

The Ripple Disaster.

There is little further to report after the week-end of the missing steamer Ripple, and it is one of those eases in which no news can hardly be good news. The finding of the captain's body removes the faint chance that the vessel has been driven before the storm, and has miraculously kept afloat, and the best that ean be hoped now—and this even is tod bold a hops—is that there may bo a survivor somewhere washed up along the coast. It is not even clear from the discovery of one body and ono boat close together whether the boat was first manned and launched and then swamped, or whether both of these sad telics were washed from a : vessel sunken or sinking. Nothing ia : deal yet, or may ever be clear, as to ! the exact cause of the disaster, but las this will be investigated soon by a judicial enquiry, we agree with the Prime Minister that nothing should be said at this stage to prejudice that enquiry. But we are glad , that Mr Massey replied sympathetically to the request of Mr P. Fraser, M.P., that all vessels leaving New Zealand ports should be equipped with wireless. It is not at all likely that a Marine Court will be able, or will attempt, to ssty whether the possession of a wireless installation could, in this particular case, have prev anted the lots of life. Thero'are storms so severe that with another vessel standing by a ship may still founder and disappear with the loss of all hands. But it 13 certainly the case that wireless greatly minimises such risks, and it is the duty of the Marine Department to see that 210 voyage involves dangers that can be avoided. Nor is it the case with wireless that it adds prohibitively to the eosfc of running a vessel. One of the difficulties with small craft ia the provision of 11 wireless operator, but no one can call that an insuperable difficulty on any class of vessel above the smallest. It eaiiuofc be doubted that even small coastal vessels, which are seldom out of sight of land, or seldom beyond some kind of contant with land with Morea or rocket or siren, would be safer with emergency wireless facilities of an elementary kind. The Polar : Bear, a small vessel which cither has I left or is about to leave Britain for the Arctic, carrying an expedition from Oxford University, has not only the wireless equipment for listening-in, on the whole journey, to Piccadilly and Leicester square, but small hand-driven transmitting sets for all sledging: parties, so that contact between them and the base will be maintained continuously. It is to be hoped that 110 vessel will over again be "in extremis" within three miles of the New Zealand coast, and be unable to call for help.