ACCOMMODATING.

Evening Star, Issue 21667, 12 March 1934, Page 8

ACCOMMODATING.

\Vn admire the impartiality of His Worship the Mayor. A mayor, once he is elected, is, of course, the representative of all the citizens. When lie welcomes visitors in his official capacity it is his function to speak as far as possible for all of them. He will not let his private prepossessions in favour of this set of opinions or the other make him a false spokesman for those —an impressive minority or possibly a majority—who must think differently. That places limits on his utterances that can easily be fraught with difficulties if ho has not the finest tact. When all his tact is exercised that may have the result of causing his remarks, in welcoming visitors more and less distinguished whose activities are yet bound up with controversy, to be so confined to generally admitted virtues that, unless they make up in,fervour what thcy'lack in specificness, they may bo doomed to pass as mere formalities. Mr Cox makes the least of those difficulties. He Ims generally something piquant to say. At first blush it might appear that the welcome which he gave to Mr Savage, Leader of the Labour Opposition Party, on Saturday was a transgression of the first rule of representativeness. Obviously it would bo most wrong if a mayor, who is not elected on political grounds, should make himself, in his municipal character, the spokesman of this or other set of political views, in regard to which opinion is divided. If the welcome stood by itself Mr Cox might be reproached for doing this on Saturday.

The city of Dunedin (he said), in which Mr Savage had a very great number of friends, looked to him to propose and give effect to some way to deliver the dominion out of the economic difficulties under which it was suffering. . . . They wanted courageous leadership in the dominion to evolve a plan to meet the present emergency. They greeted Mr Savage as a man with a programme. When the time came for Mr Savage to assume office they know he would not be found wanting. (Applause.)

As an opinion attributed to the city of Dunedin that first commitment was bold. It, implied a genera] desire in this city, which has not yet returned a majority of Labour members, for Mr Savage to become something more than leader of the Opposition, since in that position it would be impossible for him to “give effect’' to any plan. And of Mr Savage’s plan, or programme, the city of Dunedin knows very little yet. Apart from his character, which is well approved, it does not know a great deal about Mr Savage. We shall not attach too much importance, however, to Mr Cox’s welcoming of him as a saviour wlien wo remember what he said a few weeks ago in welcoming Mr Forbes.

They greeted Mr Eorbes as a man whom the Empire could trust for his character and his work. . . . As they.had emerged from the difficult times of the past he had no doubt that under Mr Forbes’s wise leadership they would emerge from their present difficulties. . . . He thought that out of this catastrophe and desolation Mr Forbes might lead the country back to such a state of solidity and progress, and the unemployed back to such prosperity, that he would be greeted as one of the groat Prime Ministers of the country. (Applause.)

Neither political party can complain upon that showing that its leader has been treated better than the other. We are reminded of the lover whoso impartiality was displayed when he “ loved this fair maiden to-day and the other fair maiden to-morrow.” Or Mr Cox’s political ideal might bo presumed to bo a real National Government, in which Mr Forbes and Mr Savage would both have a place. In some way, we might hope, they would learn to reconcile the divergent plans, so that each would have scope to fulfil himself as a deliverer. We have been con cerned to look up His Worship’s welcome to Major Douglas, another courageous man with a programme to whom he gave a civic reception when that was refused, because of differences of opinion, by the Mayor of Auckland. While he received him with warmth as a would-be deliverer, Mr Cox seems just to have stopped short of committing himself to this visitor as a saviour. And that, perhaps, was just as well. A programme of deliverance in which the ideas of the Prime Minister, the Labour Party, and Major Douglas had all to be combined might be too much of a mixture.