The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1935. BROAD VIEW NEEDED.

Evening Star, Issue 22195, 25 November 1935, Page 10

The Evening Star MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1935. BROAD VIEW NEEDED.

It would bo unlike New Zealanders, who have a reputation for keeping; their heads, if the election on Wednesday should be decided in a lit of pique. Yet tho temptations to such a decision are very obvious. For four years the National Government has been in office, and they have been hard years. It is easy to forgot now that the Government was elected to office because tho hard years had begun then, all over the world, and it was known that hard measures would be necessary to bring the ship through rough seas ahead. She has been brought through them, but discomforts of the voyage, under bare poles, are too recent a memory to make thankfulness the first sentiment as it should he. The suggestion of any cayse for thankfulness will be outrageous to some minds. There is nothing absurd about iff, however. A low diet is required for many diseases; one forgets that, if one is reasonable, when tiie disease is cured. There was a British statesman who was known as “ The Pilot that Weathered tho Storm.’’ It was a very sick and feeble nation that came through the storm, but, after his methods had brought it through, no cry was ever raised to hang him. Lord Jellicoo was not punished for the ships he lost.

Elections are important things. They make conditions for years ahead. It is essential, therefore, that they should he decided hi a broadminded way, with regard to all the factors. There is no perfect Government. There will never be one. The most that electors can ever do is to make the best choice that is available. What are the factors in this case? We have stated the Government’s record. Opponents decry it, but it is admired abroad. No one really believes that the depression of the last half-dozen years was confined to this country, or that the Government of New Zealand made it. Every other country in the world that is not too depressed still would rock with laughter at the suggestion, which would be the crowning evidence of our parochialism. But the ; signs are plentiful that New Zealand has been brought through the blizzard at least as well as any other country. Labour Governments have not done as well. In both Britain and Australia they have collapsed. “The Forbes-Coates Budget,” wrote the Sydney ‘ Bulletin,’ “ has been somewhat severely criticised. Australians, comparing Maoriland taxes and service charges with what they have to put up with, are of opinion that their brothers across the Tasman don’t know when they are well off.” While the Government has had little except kicks for its labours, the Labour Party, politically speaking, has been in clover for the last four years. It took no responsibilities for saving the country; its job was merely to capitalise discontent in its own interests. Now, recognising that a large, vague Social Credit sentiment, based largely on premises which hardly an economist has been prepared for it by others, it comes forward with a scheme of guaranteed prices, resting on Inflation, which it never proposed before, and of which the less said the better. There is no such thing as “ costless credit.” It is not in the nature of things that the Gods, who, as Mr Kipling says, “ give everything at a price,” should be improved on by politicians. The Democrats have less claim to be considered.

But it is a bad, bad Government that waits judgment, say the Labour men who have fond dreams of succeeding it; and anyone who cared to could find flaws in it. We have urged the need, however, of treating elections broadly, with regard for all the factors. There was one other Government that was just as bad, in the eyes of Labour zealots. That was the British National Government, which pulled Great Britain out of a mess that was being increased by a Labour Government, and which also did hard things, by which many were pinched, as a necessary part of its programme .of general recovery. Hear Sir Stafford Cripps upon it; “ Jn no circumstances whatever am I prepared to give any support to tlie National Government. I know it for what it is—namely, the tool of its Capitalist masters. We cannot allow the workers to be lined up once more behind the great financiers and industrialists.” The British electorate did not endorse Sir Stafford Cripps’s judgment. It returned the National Government to office with a much larger majority than had been estimated by either its friends or its opponents, thereby exemplifying a British ability to take all factors into consideration, when making its decision at the polls, which has been the admiration of the world. The great majority of British electors knew that if cuts were made, when the national finances had reached a crisis, they were made to save them from worse things, achieving that end. A different disposition is shown in France. There crises continue indefinitely, with Governments that change every year, because its people will not cnduj-e the most essential cuts. There should be small doubt which example will be followed in New Zealand, where economies have effected their purpose and the way to new prosperity should be clear so long as rash experiments are avoided.