The Grey River Argus FRIDAY, August 24, 1945. NAZISM IN N.Z?

Grey River Argus, 24 August 1945, Page 4

The Grey River Argus FRIDAY, August 24, 1945. NAZISM IN N.Z?

Had they a policy for good of the whole community the Nationalist Party would not to-day be ashamed to proclaim it. They are not ashamed to proclaim a policy of pure prejudice, so that whatever they secretly propose cannot be worth much. Some of their kidney lately proposed a march on Parliament to protest against what they chose to call Nazism, but the moment it leaked out organised Labour would join in the anti-Nazi demonstration, those who proposed it levanted, and actually proved their ruse to have instead been an anti-Labour demonstration. People ought to have this fact in mind between this and the time .of the next (‘lection. It is a reminder that when they talk of their nationalism the. anti-Labour faction are animated only by • narrow parochialism. Their paid press propaganda, ostensibly against the principle of a State' bank, is just another illustration of political duplicity. It is not the bank, but the Government, which this publicity is designed to discredit. In the House they do not argue the actual banking issue—they only argue the man. If a Labour Member demonstrates that, as the na-

tional credit is created by the t nation, and therefore. should be controlled by the nation, no Nationalist denies it. Instead,, its principle is said to be an item of national socialism. The con- j sequence left to be inferred is that the Bank of England is about to : be Nazified! There is a whole 1 lot of similar claptrap coming from the Nationalists in the House. It is all of a piece with their pretence that as the war is i over, so are all of, its financial ob- j ligations, including those to the ■ servicemen. But the latest and ’ worst instance of the device of • exploiting prejudice is one which . they have not dared to attempt in Parliament, because of their awareness that it would there be exposed for what it is. It has been at the Party’s conference that the President stooped so low as to imply that this country should boycott from Governmental office all but natives of the country. He spoke of his party as one of natives, going on to say: “For some ten years we have been under the government of a group who have come from abroad”—just like Sir George Grey, Richard Seddon, William F. Massey, Sir Joseph Ward, John McKenzie, Julius Vogel, John Ballance, Frederick Weld, William Rolleston. Robert Stout, Samuel Marsden, Bishop Selwyn, and a host of other notable men who moulded New Zealand’s early history. The Party President, of course, did not, even quote one from that small list, but. he could have quoted a few hundred thousand, including liis own forebears, and in that respect could have omitted from' the present Parliament only the very few who represent the native race. Not to be natives, in the President’s words, “incapacitates them from understanding and interpreting aright the national spirit, and the mind of the individual New Zealander.” The President —forgetting in his petty spirit, it was men like Seddon, Balance, McKenzie and Ward who were half a century ago an inspiration for democrats in Australia and further afield — said our “governing group brought to New Zealand with them a set of political theories unsuitecl to the country, and not to be credited with British origin.” Whatever he might say of the policy.of public enterprise he has in mind when questioning the right of any but native-born to assist in government, the Nationalist President did not re- . motely allude to the fourteen or fifteen million voters who a few weeks ago endorsed exactly the same thing in Britain, without questioning whether it is of British origin. Moreover, as to the mind of the New Zealander, it could not have been misinterpreted for a decade and the same , Government possess the solid t prospect of carrying on for yet another decade. The species of ■ political philosophy preached to- ! day by the National Parly is puerile. Hitler is the only historic - character who could be quoted as ' its exemplar.