LIBERAL OUTLOOK

Hokitika Guardian, 22 June 1921, Page 3

LIBERAL OUTLOOK

MR M’CALL CM’S CONFIDENCE. LEADERSHIP DISCUSSED. Confidence in the prospects of the Liberal Party was expressed by Mr R. M’Callum, member for Wairau, in conversation with a “Lyttelton Times” reresentatives. He said that he had no feay directly the party found the right men imbued with the principles of Liberalism, to represent it in each constituency when a general election took place. The financial tangle into which the Reform Party had brought the country would mean its undoing in the end. Mr M’Callum ndded, louder and ever more persistent were the demands one heard on all sides for the return of a finance expert of the experience and ability of Sir Joseph "Ward, to give the country a lead. Whether ho would : ever return or not he could not say. I Failing Sir Joseph, he placed the Hon. j A. M. M vers ns a sound and capable I business man, whose advice and guidance at the present time would be invaluable. Mr M’Callum was not surprised at ; the position the Liberal Party found itself in after the last general election A like position, lie said, obtained in , the Old Country. The Reform Party here, like the Unionist or Conservative Party in Great Britain, had practically swallowed and adopted the whole policy of tTie Liberals (notwithstanding strenuous opposition to its main planks in days past). The difference between New Zealand and the Mother Country was that whilst here we had a purely Reform or Conservative Prime Minis ter there the Conservatives had actually submitted themselves to the domination and rule of a Liberal Radical Prime Minister, whom they preferred to follow rather than give up office by reverting to their own party traditions. Had the Reform Party here been led by such an outstanding genius as S : r Joseph Ward it would have been ve'-y much to the advantage of the country, and more especially its public finances. An English Liberal member of Parliament, Commander Hilton Young, D. 5.0., now Secretary to the Treasury, in discussing the disorganisation of Liberalism recently put the position very clearly when in defining a Conservative from the Liberals’ point of view, he said, “the most unprofitable and hopeless of all Conservative is he whose conservatism consists in an un'nelligent repetition of the Liberal catchwords of a dead and gone epoch.” An apt illustration of this, said Mr M’Callum, was shown in the continuance by the Reform Party of ‘he "‘cheap money” shibboleth by which the Reform Government enriched its already wealthy land-owning friends by purchasing at enhanced values their lands for soldier settlers, “ffheap money was a good policy when farmers and others were oppressed by high rates of interest but to apply it when cheap or rather reasonably prices lands were required for soldier settlement was just about as stupid a transaction as' the substituting of men without experience on improved lands in the place of successful farmers

Mr M’Callum said he and Mr, G. Witty, M.P. had a most interesting tour recently through Auckland, AVaikato and tlie Hauraki Plains. They met ninny people, and returned satisgod that Liberalism was by no means a dead tiling in New Zealand. Temporarily the party was out of action, and until a sensible arrangement could be come to with reasonable Labour the Reform Party would sit entrenched on the Treasury benches. Speaking for himself, lie felt thnt in addition to : ts continued fight for reforms and against militarism, absolutism and class domina tion and so on, tbe time bad come when the party should sound a warning note thnt it would not stand for religious intolerance, bigotry or any curtailment of tlie liberty of the people. “Take,” said he, “the question of prohibition. There you have at once a supreme test of Liberalism. A man may vote prohibition—hundred do as a protest against the present uncontrolled and monopolistic system of wholesale and retail licenses—and not bo a prohibitionist at all. On tbe other hand ,if one says be is a Liberal and votes prohibition, then he is deceiving himself, and does not understand throne of' the fundamental principles of Liberalism is ‘equal opportunity to all.’ Tim carrying of prohibition means the direct negation of this. Then take indentured labour. No true Liberal could on any pretence support this modified form of slavery. It is true some socalled Liberals do, but quite forget that their espousal of this form of oppression for the sole purpose of making riches proves at once they are not Liberal.

“As has been truly said, Liberalism is not so much a particular creed or set of principles, it is more an attitude of the mind. Commander Hilton Young aptly describes it as ‘temperament.’ That, lie truly says, so far as all true Liberals are concerned, fortunately foj* ever remains unaltered and unalterable,” Mr M’Callaum added that lie still had faith in the traditional Liberal Rarty, and that from the present somewhat chaotic position the Liberal thought and sentiment in the country would force common-sense candidates to contest seats in Parliament in the cause of progress, tolerance and fair dealing, so that “Government of the people, for the people, by the people,” would lie enjoyed as soon as the tragedy of the war was left well behind.