The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1908. POLITICAL LABELS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 282, 21 August 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1908. POLITICAL LABELS.

The newspapers will shortly be printing lists of tho candidates for election to Parliament, anc! no doubt, following tho usual practice, they will add to the name of each man an initial indicative of his political beliefs. It is worth while paying soma attention to this matter of political labels, since the political development of this country lias reached a stage ■:at which the rough and ready classifications'of tho past are valueless; and oven misleading. Political denominations tend to become fixed, and political parties often continue to bear and to defend titles which they have outgrown, and Much not merely fail to define their aims but which even express meanings to which those aims are opposed. New Zealand affords a' particularly good illustration of this clinging of a party to a namo to which it is not entitled. Tho Government still calls itself the " Liberal " Government, and still demands that its policy shall be regarded as a specially choico brand of " Liberalism." That its policy is the direct opposite of tho true, original " Liberalism does not disturb our complacent .State Socialists in the least. Taxed with the harnessing of an honourable name to an alion employment, the average State Socialist usually replies that the namo does not matter. " Anyway," so his argument will run, " I know what I moan when I say Liberalism. Perhaps I do not mean what tho pioneers of Liberalism meant, but that is my business. "When I say I, am a Liberal, I mean that I opposo Toryism and Conservatism, and support the Government." Like Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's story, in short, Liberalism means exactly what ho chooses it to mean. Of course, Liberalism does not change its meaning with the vagaries of those who perpetrate all kinds of follies in its name, and our political Humpty Dumpty is simply misusing a word that -has a definite and < fixed significance. But the question is more than one of more accuracy in terminology. Tiicre are many people who, misled by tho title of " Liberal," cheerfully support a policy which they would first feel uneasy about, and' then reject, if it we're given its true label of " Socialism."

In the only list of candidates that, we have seen, the initials are " M " (Ministerialist) and " 0 " (Opposition). This is a reasonably fair classification, although it has serious defects, sincc it leaves tho reader quite in tlio dark lipon several points upon which ho would like some information. Unhelpful as such an allocation of titles undoubtedly is, it is at any rate much better than the obsolete division of politicians—we exclude Labour and Independent candidates, and the few people who"take pride in openly calling themselves' Socialists—into " Liberals " and " Conservatives." There is. a newspaper in the south which persistently refers to the Opposition as the, Conservative party, and to the people who oppose the " Liberal " Government as Conservatives. Wc are bound to crcdit the newspaper in question with sufficient intelligence to realise its misuse of the terms. The idea of the .journal," no doubt, is to suggest to its thoughtless constituents that anyone who opposes- tho Socialistic legislation of the Government is a benighted Tory, panting with reactionary fury and anxious to restore the conditions of feudal tyranny. It is unnecessary to repeat here, what we have often explained, that Liberalism in its original sense, and in the sense understood by Mr. Asquith) tho leador. of Liberalism in

Great Britain, is,/the exact reverse of the policy of the self-styled Liberals of this country. Liberalism means the guardianship of individual liberty: its

aim is the knocking off of every fetter that hampers legitimate individual effort. New Zealand "Liberalism" stands for the imposition, on the individual of a now set of fetters, the substitution of State tyranny for the class tyranny that the original Liberals overthrew. The opponents of State Socialism are therefore the true Liberals: it is they who seek to liberate where the Socialists who are sailing under false colours seek to enslave. The division of parties is no longer a division between Tories and Liberals, for the sufficient reason that Tories no longer exist in this country. It is a division between Liberals on the one hand and Socialists of various kinds on the other, ranging from the State Socialist who aims at Socialism by instalments to the Trades Hall orator who clamours for a sudden and violent plunge into Socialistic chaos. Yet. while it is correct ancl sufficient to say that Mr. Massey, for example, is a Liberal, it would not be quite correct or wholly sufficient to call even tliQ most ardent Ministerialist a Socialist. His political creed is usually vitiated by inconsistencies: his commonsense makes him an individualist, his intellectual limitations allow him to support Socialistic proposals in * the belief that they are not Socialistic, at all. But the political issue in this country is rapidly narrowing down to Socialism v. Individualism, and to classify candidates to any useful purpose the labels must, correspond to the issue.