"COURAGE NEVER MORE NEEDED"

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 120, 23 May 1930, Page 10

"COURAGE NEVER MORE NEEDED"

(By Telegraph.)

{Special to "The Evening Post.") AUCKLAND, This Day. The "Auckland Star" (United) m an editorial on " The New Leader, says: "Possibly Mr. Forbes may say, as Mr. Baldwin did when he was called to the most responsible post m the country, that he needs the prayers as well as the congratulations of his friends. As was generally expected, •the choice of the party in this particularly difficult time has fallen upon the most experienced of its leaders. Experience, capacity, and temperament marked out Mr. Forbes for tho succession. He is a veteran Liberal, with service dating back over twenty years, to the days when Sir Joseph Ward was Prime Minister for tho first time. A settler on the Cheviot estate —the first of the compulsory purchases made under tho Liberal' land policy of the 'nineties-4-Mr. Forbes has always been closely connected, both by personal experience and by conviction, with the Liberal tradition of land settlement, and his; appointment as Minister of Lands when Sir Joseph WaM formed his Ministry in 1928 was generally approved. It is a good omen, we hope, in these days when land settlement has a^ain become the question of the hour, nk only that the Prime Minister should be particularly well acquainted with the history of settlement and tho administration of tho Department, but that •he should be a farmer who has benefited by the land policy of Liberalism. Mr. Forbes has already shown that as a Minister of Lands he has energy and ideas. In the House last year ho was a capable and tactful deputy leader, and he is popular with all parties. Mr. Forbes can be under no illusions as to the difficulties of his task. He has first to reconstruct the Ministry. Though Sir Joseph will remain in the Executive Council and Ministers will continue to benefit by his advice, he will no longer be the Minister of Finance. This will be the most difficult post to fill. Mr. Forbes, we trnst, will act courageously in this reconstruction, as in all other

things. Courage was never more needed in our politics than it is to-day—the courage to accept and tho courago to refuse. Problems press on all sides. If Mr; Forbes and his colleagues face them with courago and progressive minds they will, quickly command the confidence of the country. Tho party must follow its now leader with complete loyalty. It is only a month to the opening of Parliament, when tho country will expect from tho new Ministry a full declaration of policy, by which it will bo judged."