Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1919. NATIONAL UNITY

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 140, 11 December 1919, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1919. NATIONAL UNITY

Thirteen months after the Armistice and twelve months after the " Khaki " General Election, the British Prime Minister declares the national cause still demands the subordination of party interests to those of the nation. "Continuance of national unity," Mr. Lloyd Georgo says, "is still as necessary as in wartime;- Party conflict should not yet be resumed." To what extent this appeal may be inconsistent with the stampeding of the country in the interests of the Coalition' at the General Election, with the ruthless application of the "coupon" system to tho elimination of every nonCoalition Liberal, and with the relegation of even Mr. Asquith himself to private life, is a question which it is unnecessary to discuss. Under the impulse of patriotism, and in the expectation that a, quick and decisive peace would settle most of the troubles of the nation and thi world, the Coalition may have overstepped the mark in December last. But tho vital point is not whether they went wrong then, but whether they are going right now. Is Mr. Lloyd George's appeal for unity and for the suppression of party strife well founded?

Under the best of conditions man is but a fallible creature, and after more than four years of a war which has falsified the wisest calculations, and more than a year of peace which has been equally full of surprises, any pretensions tc infallibility would be more absurd than ever. At the end of thirteen months of so-called peace, the task with which every nation is confronted is seen to be one of even more stupendous difficulty than when tho signing by Germany of a humiliating Armistice seemed to have prepared the way for the millennium. Neither the Coalitionists nor the Liberals of Great Britain, nor anybody else, need bo ashamed of confessing that they are wiser now than then, and that both foreign and domestic complications are sounding a clearer call to unity than ever. Mr. Lloyd George referred to the United States for an apt illustration of both sides of the problem. "Party strife in America," he said, " has resulted in jeopardising peace, and endangering the League of Nations in a country which took a prominent part to promote it. Is not this a warning that we are not yet through the wood?" Nearly everybody in this country, and practically «very patriot, can see the irresistible force of this argument as applied to the British people. And similarly the call to unity in this country, and the absurdity of complicating our domestic problems by party divisions, must be equally obvious to our well-wishers in Great Britain. But that in either case those who can so clearly see what is the proper course for others to take will be ready to tako it themselves is not equally ceTtain.

From the standpoint of party in New Zealand it might, of course, bo urged that Great Britain, with her world-wide Imperial responsibilities and her ferment of social and industrial discontent, has a much stronger inducement to unity than this country. To this contention, the first answer is that, unless New Zealand is to stultify the brave deeds of her soldiers in the war, the participation of her representatives in the War Cabinet and the Peace Conference, and her membership of the League of Nations, she cannot ignore her Imperial responsibilities any more than the Mother Country. As to the second point, it may be conceded that our industrial problems have not yet presented the alarming aspect of those of Great Britain, but ho would be a rash prophet who dared to say that they may not at any moment develop in such a way as to demand eyery ounce of l'uolutlon and power that the country PPMUM* for their successful treatment.

To this must be added that the question whether the menace of these problems may not be raised to the danger-point depends in large measure upon the extent to which the. electors ignore the call to unity at the polls next week. Great Britain was not threatened at the last General Election, and is not now threatened, with the possibility that the balance of political power might pass to a Labour Party which is disloyal to King and country, and which is frankly anti-Im-perial, anti-national, and revolutionary in its aims. With such a possibility New Zealand is now plainly confronted. If, in tho presence of such a danger, the patriotic electors ignore the claims of national unity, and allow their forces to be divided by petty party differences, they may precipitate on Thursday next a calamity which every one of them will deplore.