The New National Party

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 200, 21 May 1936, Page 6

The New National Party

Sir, — You lime published two letters criticising your leading article of May 14. “Oliver Twist” protests against your assertion that. “The country’s tolerant expectancy is giving place to apprehension.” Sir. you never wrote a truer statement. Apprehension to-day exists throughout the community; it is not universal but it Is affecting every section. ‘•Oliver Twist” talks of the "years of mismanagement” and of tiie "coming prosperity,” as if the slump was due to the late Government and our emergence from' it due to our present rulers. This, of course, is ridiculous; the “years of mismanagement” at any rate placed the country on a'financially sound basis, for which the present Government should be very thankful. It ha» come in to find a surplus instead of au empty ’Treasury. The optimism so evident toward tiie end of last year was due to reviving trade, but this has been replaced by apprehension. and business is suffering. “Oliver Twist” admits that a “certain section of the community will be apprehensive,” but he has mistaken the reason. The section oL'tlie community which is apprehensive is that huge section of our people who prefer •personal freedom to submission to State domination of their every activity. That section embraces members iu every calling, whether employees or employers. John Sykes, your other critic, commends your advice “that the new party must put the past behind it and face the country with a platform and policy suited to tiie requirements of the present.” I also commend that advice, but your correspondent argues that the jwlicy suited to present requirements is -the abolition of individual freedom aud initiative. He quotes “Tiie Times” (London) as a supporter, whereas it forecasts “a new organisation of society based upon eo-operation as opposed to the individual concept. This docs not argue support for the total abolition of individual initiative and complete domination of the citizens by the State. Co-operation of free citizens, for tiie general good, as against activities directed only for the good of the individual, does not do away with personal initiative or private enterprise, as John Sykes appears to think. Nothing that has appeared in the 1 rees warrants, his assumption that the Aational Barty desires “to stay the progress of economic and social evolutionary processes,” but rather that it recognises these and will ask the country to agree to a policy o£ evolution rather than sledge-hanimer of destruction. The Government does not believe in “evolutionary processes” at all, but. prefers a charge of dynamite. Nowhere in the world to-day, or in the past, has any country or community succeeded in achieving progress by the abolttion’of personal initatiye and competition. Those that have tried to do so have had to revert to private enterprise m some form or other. —I am, etc., May 18.