The Grey River Argus MONDAY, June 30, 1947. NATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY

Grey River Argus, 30 June 1947, Page 4

The Grey River Argus MONDAY, June 30, 1947. NATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY

’J’ALL though the claims may be,

and still taller the promises which people find in National Party propaganda, few will have expected its president, Mr W. J. Sim, would tell its conference on Saturday that in this country Western civilisation depends on the party. That he himself anticipated such a surprise is denoted by his lending colour to the assertion by insinuating that the party opposed to his own is identical with Communism. If socialisation of means of production is Communism, then his own side is in the same boat, for its spokesmen deny—especially at election time—that they will denationalise anything—except the Bank of New Zealand! They will leave the Reserve Bank alone. Mr Sim pretends to see the formation of Western civilisation in ancient Greece —where four out of five were slaves —ancient Rome — where the proportion was the same —and Palestine. Is it to be therefore inferred that he would rule out Christendom? What he does inf erenti ally dislike is such a thing as social security, because its realisation in his professed view has coincided with, a poison in the body politic, a spiritual paralysis. The National Party has not produced any battery to galvanise the people into spirituality. It is a safe bet that when they get together so as to revive faith—i.e., in the future of New Zealand—somebody is likely to be sold a pup. It is no new social order—the slump was good enough—we need, but an “age of faith”, he says, without, however,nominating, any of the .politicians who are to be regarded as the new apostles. It is doubtless a poor wisecrack to ask what he J means by civilisation, for had he any positive thing to give as a definition, he Avoid cl not so carefully have dodged doing so. Hence the sorry necessity to recall the “civilisation” for which avc •. headed when his party had to walk the plank at the behest

of the ‘‘inert,” who couldn’t get a job. The “props of civilisation” must then have become so rotten that they needed not to be “directly assaulted or insidiously undermined”. But to come down to the present—to the “mushroom growth of yesterday” as Mr Sim describes public enterprise—what is his alternative? Surely the term “the future” is a pretty empty concept in which- to tell people to pin faith. What has the National Party to offer in the present? Leadership, according to the president. The other fellow can do the work. Au empty stomach is not much of a foundation for civilisation, let alone an army, or a proletariat. If he reckons manual workers have a great future, whose action has taught him that lesson? A political party, he says, has to further the interests of more than one section; to attend to more than loaves and fishes; and to usher in an age of faith, leading, as its goal, to social rearrangements. Here again the nature of those rearrangements is left to conjecture, and it is a fair assumption that if they were reckoned generally to commend themselves they would have been definitely stated. If Mr Sim insinuates Socialists work under cover, he goes in himself for a good deal of cover. This may not be an age of faith in capitalism, and the reason is that system is, played out. except for the funeral oration. It commanded faith until it created too many propertyless people, and demonstrated that greed was anti-social, under no matter ’ what concealment. It turned out to be the foe of distributive or commutative justice, and the spirit which has replaced it so widely to-day is, however mundane or materialistic, an aspiration for social justice in the future. A lot of things that need to be done in that direction may not be done with pious preaching, nor absolute justice, but done they will be in spite of any romantic hearkening back to the days when the working- masses were powerless to redress their wrongs. Until the National Party gets down to tin tacks, and says plainly what its policy may be, all this talk of .'Western civilisation and faith in the future will go down the drain.