Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 23, 1931. NO TIME FOR NAGGING

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 69, 23 March 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 23, 1931. NO TIME FOR NAGGING

For about a month after the publication of the frank and' courageous statement in which the Prime Minister disclosed the grave plight of the country's finances and / the relief measures. proposed by the. Govern-, ment, he seemed to be left almost alone to carry as heavy a load of responsibility as ever troubled any of his predecessors. While Labour was, of course, fierce in its hostility, and equally, of/ course, Labour politicians paraded a far higher degree of hostility than they really felt, the Prime Minister's colleagues had little or nothing to say, and the country would have been far less, uneasy if the little that the Reform Party had to say had been left unsaid.' But last /week, when the second reading of the Finance Bill brought the House of Representatives face to face with the crux of the Government's programme, little room was left for anxiety on either of these grounds. The case for the Government was stated with a candour equal to that of Mr. Forbes himself, and with greater force, by his colleagues, the Minister of Native Affairs and the Minister of Labour. At the same time the co-dperation of the Reform Party was assured by the Leader of the Opposition and Mr. Downie Stewart in speeches which were also remarkable, for their constructive contributions to the debate. The result of these four;notable speeches is that the apprehensions with which the opening of the debate on the second reading of the Finance Bill was awaited are much weaker .at its close. The public mind would have been easier, still if" the last, day of the debate liad not brought a jarring note to, mar the harmony established by the speeches of the Reform leaders. Mr. Coates referred to the differences of opinion which had divided the two principal parties, and without suggesting that they had been healed, dismissed them as beyond the scope of profitable discussion now. But the old charges to which in such a crisis the Leader of the Opposition preferred to apply the principle that bygones should be bygones were taken up and rubbed in by his Senior Whip. ' ■"'..' Mr. Ji A. Nash said that ..the country's finances had teen steadily going back eversince,-the Government, came into office. It was, a policy of drift, drift, drift. It had been said the Government was following, a policy of "borrow, boom, and burst." "Well,'-' he added," all that has come topass.'' In thus adopting the attitude of "I told you so," the Opposition Whip was making the very mistake which his leaders had so carefully avoided. But besides being wholly inopportune his criticism was very largely unjust. It is perfectly true that, under the domination of Labour, which apparently Mr. J. A. Nash is anxious to restore, the Government's policy had been to a considerable extent a policy of drift, with occasional touches of something worse. But it is. not true that the slump in our finances, especially the steep fall during the last two months, can be reasonably attributed to any action or-, inaction on the part of the Government. In Britain the lack of statesmanship displayed by a Labour Government under similar conditions has been justly censured, but we may be quite sure that Mr. Baldwin would have been the subject of similar censures, and would have been losing by-elections just as fast, if he-had remained in office. No Government in the world has proved equal to the strain from which every civilised country is suffering. Every one of them has blundered, but not even the statesmanship which is wise after the event has been able to show how the universal malady could have been averted, or how it could have been cured when it came. The extreme example of the injustice and the meanness of which an Opposition has been guilty was provided in November last when the Democrats made great gains in the United States elections with the "Hoover depression" as their principal slogan. No party in Great Britain or in New Zealand has been mean enough to speak of the "Mac Donald depression" or the "Forbes depression." There would, indeed, be far less excuse, for such tactics here than in Britain, for by his lack of policy, and even by positive impolicy, Mr. Mac Donald has undoubtedly aggravated the troubles of Britain, but a striking contrast to his prolonged indecision is presented by the resolution with "which Mr. Forbes rose to the height of a great occasion just as soon as he appreciated its magnitude., It is no doubt open to the critics of Mr. Forbes, and it will be open to the historian, to say that he should have foreseen the crisis long ago. We fully believe that if Mr. Coates and Mr. Downie Stewart had been in charge of the ship they would have begun to shorten sail before the dirty weather of last year had culminated in this tremendous blizzard, and would thereby have eased the strain. But six- months ago neither they nor anybody can have foreseen the pace at which our troubles were to grow, and it must be remembered that during the greater part of those six months the Prime Minister was absent, from the country. The rapidity with which he acled after his re-

turn suggests not only that his colleagues and advisers had clearly realised the danger and provisionally outlined a programme to meet it, but that action would have been taken earlier if .their chief had not been away. Though so much must in fairness be said in extenuation of the policy of drift which is charged against the Government, we are really less concerned to defend it than to commend the thoroughness with which the Reform leaders seem determined to put the interests of the nation before the apparent interests of their party, to refrain from barren controversy about past mistakes, neglected warnings, or the misappropriated remedies, and to confine themselves to constructive, and therefore helpful, criticism of the drastic remedies that the emergency demands. Like Mr. Forbes, Mr. Coates has heard the call of a great occasion and has obeyed it. We trust that in the House his party' may show themselves as worthy of such a lead as we are sure that they will in''the country. It is quite true, as their Senior Whip says, that the previous policy! of the Government was largely one| of "drift, drift, drift." It is also true that, as the result, partly of that drift but still more of mysterious forces which nobody in any part of the world has been able to measure or control, the country finds itself in .a very unpleasant position, but the practical problem is not who, if anybody, is to blame, but how we are to get out of it. Till we are out of the danger let us all agree to treat bygones as bygones. In the meantime let us recognise that it is not nag, nag, nag but unity, unity, unity that will enable us to pull through. ■-•■/*• - '"■