BACHELORS IN POLITICS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 7

BACHELORS IN POLITICS.

(London Daily Telegraph.) The study of the politics of other nations is fruitful in ideas. From Jugoslavia we take a suggestion which may be commended impartially to all our parties for consideration and report. The time has perhaps not yet come to enforce it. M. Stephan Haclitch, who leads the party of_ the Croatian peasants, has been driven, we know not by what bitter experience, to the conclusion that a bachelor cannot be an honest’politician. In the society, perhaps too exhilarating, of Jugo-slavia when a man has no family ties he tends inevitably towards frivolity and irresponsibility. So only a married man can be a useful Minister or member of Parliament, and in the party of M. Raditch they give bachelors an alternative sentence, marriage or expulsion. Time is allowed to the culprit—we are not informed how long —to find a lady who will consent to save his political life. Tt is a stern system; it recalls the stories of Louis XL and other grim humorists offering to save the life of the condemned felon if he could persuade a woman to marry him. But perhaps it is adapted to the political needs of Jugoslavia. Its effect on the strife of parties might he supposed sedative. “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.” it is written, “for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief” ; and the philosopher, being himself married, went on to say that your confirmed bachelor is generally a self-pleasing, humorous mind who cannot endure any restraint. But in spite of the Baconian authority we doubt whether the dispositions of our politicians can he thus explained. From left to right most of them seem to- be married. Possibly the career of being a politician’s wife has irresistible attractions for women. There is no accounting for tastes. Perhaps the politician is by nature a marrying man. What can we ininikc of AI. Raditch’s theory that the bachelor is a wild, {responsible creature ? The two most conspicuous bachelors in the history of English politics arc the younger Pitt and the Earl of Balfour. Their bitterest enemies would not accuse, them of irresponsible vagaries. Would the world have been saved any of its revolutions if the leaders had been married? Marriage, indeed, was not control of the Jacobins. who gained control of the French Revolution. but the moderate men who began it were most respectably matrinnonkiil. Lenin himself had a wife. There is no security in marriage lines.