Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1931. PUBLIC OPINION.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2804, 23 November 1931, Page 4

Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1931. PUBLIC OPINION.

ANYONE who has ever closely observed the workings of a political movement knows what “resolutions” are worth, how a seemingly powerful campaign in the Press can be started by a few able and zealous, writers, how a stage army can be marched out by one door and brought back by another, and how the appearance of an . “opinion” can be created (and alsov how quickly and easily they peter out once the management is withdrawn), writes Mr L. B. Namier, in the latest of his hooks, “Skyscrapers.” Everyone knows how elections are made, how issues can be manipulated, how little of a mandate for particular purposes is obtained from general elections, and. how easy it is to deceive oneself and mistake the echb of one’s own cries and enthusiasms for a spon’ancous and intelligent voice. And ■■’L after all is said, that can be said in ridicule of the conception of a “public opinion” and of the methods employed with a view to ascertaining it, the fact remains that it exists and that it forms the best part of those circumstances which both Frederick the Great and Napoleon recognised as their masters. There is such a thing as logic of ideas, and, ideas when looked at from a distance, seem to have an independent life and existence of their own; their “logic” is the outcome of the slow, hardly conscious thinking of the masses, very primitive, simplified in the process of accumulation and in its massed advance deprived of all its individual features, like the pebbles in a river bed. And there is no such a thing as mental atmosphere, which at times becomes so all-pervading that hardly anyone can withdraw himself from its influence. It is the avowed aim of our system of vnpresentative and responsible government to secure the rule of “public opinion,” and it does so for fairly satisfactory degree, provided no illjudged attempts are made at attaining accuracy of narrow, artificial, mechanical devices, which cannot supply reliable results, but merely . produce a deceptive feeling of knowledge and certainty, where watchful attention and conscientious searching of heart, more Dearly answer the purpose. However fine machine proportional representation, . referendum, popular initiative, etc., may be, they cannot supply a valid verdict where there is no articulate thought, and they moreover rest on and in turn foster the dangerous delusion that public opinion is a matter of numbers. Votes can be counted, not weighed, and the degree of emphasis which the individual puts into his vote, the measure of sacrifice with which he is prepared to back it and the dynamic force of his personality, are hopelessly lost in this mechanic nmn..The “unknown god” cannot be measured with a tape. The true idea of representative government is to place men in office who are likely to react to problems, situations and events in the same way as the great mass of their countrymen. ■ m do so first and in a more articulate and manner than - the masses can; this is called-leader-ship. In other words the rulers, if properly chosen, should be able to find the directive of public opinion in their own consciousness and feelings; and if they fail to find it there they are not likely to ascertain it by any other means.’i>.