Dunedin Letter

Mt Benger Mail, 25 March 1914, Page 1

Dunedin Letter

(From Tuapeka Times.) Well done Lord Grey ! It is not often we have a man of the mental calibre, high rank and great experience in responsible position like Earl Grey in our midst. Did 1 hear a social democrat say " Who waintß him?" Because, if so, 1 should like to remind that representative of the new era that as long as human nature is what it is brains and character will always count. And this for two reasons : We cannot get along without them and the supply is very small. Jsow my dear Mr Alunro and my even dearer Mr .Maguire please do not fret and fume and splutter and splurge. If it is of any service to: you 1 will put you out of your misery at once, in my interpretation of these terms you have neither. So please go home and go t Q b'd and rest in peace. The things, the only things that count in this world, are not yet yours. To proceed. Karl Grey, ex-Governor-General of Canada, a man whose Imperialism i« of the sanest and finest type, a statesman whose opinions are listened to with respect, and an orator whose speeches have proved a mine of wealth tor amateur declaimers, Earl Grey, 1 say, has been among us. Very feu people knew or cared. Had he been a cricketer, a base ball player, or a fooljta&ller, we should have rushed him. But there were obstacles. Earl Grey did not wish to be rushed and tiioso who knew of his presence were not of a rushing type. But ho came ho saw and he took a mental note. Then he went on his way and took more notes assimilating them as he went. Then ho got to Wellington and there ho met his Waterloo. The horny handed aristocrats of the New Zealand Uncivil Service did rush him. Nothing would stay them. They must have a speech, they wanted to bask in the smiles and sunshine oi vice-royalty and thi.)- would show him thai they knew how to behave. So the Earl spoke. i do not know but 1 think Wellington must be rather sorry. Ihe windy city lives on salaries paid for out of corrowed money, the huge majority of its citizens havj iuaxed tat and kicking on Government jobs, therefore for the Earl to speak as he did must have caused a shiver to run down the high collar and creased trousers of Wellington society. Was ever anything so unexpected, so audacious ': To tell us that we are not essential to the body politic, that we do not return the cost of our keep, that the man who refuses a Government job and works on his own is the inlinitely better man, to say these things is to taLk rank treason and Hat blasphemy. les, practically, this is what Lord Grey did say. Here are his words :

'* There is one fact in the national life which 1 have; only just discovered, and that has caused me to experience a positive Bhiver of apprehension. The tact is that one-eighth ot your population is directly dependent on the State. May 1 say with the greatest respect that Ido not beliovo it is possible for any nation which encourages its people to lie down upon the State to win cither greatness or prosperity. 1 hope you have not already got into that dangerous position in Aew Zealand, but you may get there unless you take care. Whenever you had a people relying upon the State instead of upon themselves you will find a pervading inliuence which is seriously detrimental to national vitality, lou will iiud an influence which saps, corrodes, and liuuairs olliciency, and impoverishes, pauperises, *<nd degrades the character of the people, lake care you do not make tthe dependents the masters ot the State.''

1 would mat every Education Board throughout the Dominion would have these words printed in, largo type, framed and hung on the wails oi our schools. Earl Grey, in these few, vivid sentences has put his linger on the uker spot of our democracy, and has made every thinking man and woman see whither we are going. For although he hoped we had not got into tiiat dangerous position of being a nation of parasites, living on each other and stewing in our - own juice, although he inferred wo were toOi wise, too sensible and too ambitious, we ourselves know that the very evil against which he warned us has already got a good grip on our vitals and will, as surely as 1 am writing these lines and within no very far olf day, bring us to the dust. This Dominion has committed itself to the pernicious doctrine of looking to the state for everything, we are training our boys and girls to do the same and every day we more nearly resemble the snake which made a meal oil its own tail.

And, so, 1 cry : " Well done, Lord trey [" Why ? Well for one reason our distinguished visitor is merely proclaiming only in more far reaching tones, what the Dunedin correspondent o. the Tuapeka Times has been saying for more years than he cares to count. I know of nothing more tiueatening to the future of this country than the vast army oi State dependents that is annually gathering in our midst. " One person in every eight " is in Has ignoble but menacing position says Lord Grey, i think his lordship is wrong. (The Hon. J. A. Miller, who would be more likely to know once said that it was one person in every seven. Is it not pitiable? A costly system of so-called education the main purpose of which is t 0 turn out boys and girls for the civil a< rvice I

But the worst feature has yet to be a med. Earl Grey spoke of the niena e threatening the whole community from such a state of affairs. In time, lie implied, the State dependents would be the State'a masters. It is a true saying; and the evil ia already upon us.

At present it appears in more or less unpretentious guise. The ignorant and indifferent public know nothing and care lens about it. Yet it is absolutely true that no government dare reorganise the New Zealand Civil Service, Seddou a«d Ward, of course.

unblushingly added to it. Everything that could be given away from the Speakership and Legislative Council and law departments down to the casual hands in the railway workshops were mere pawns in the political game. They added to the service without shame and had no more intention of reducing it to reasonable limits than they had of engaging in an evangelical revival. Mr Massey and his party are upon a different footing. They were pledged to reduce expenditure. They protested they would do something. They have not done so. There has not been the least attempt to discharge the scores upon scores of utterly useless and therefore unnecessary youths und maidens and men and .women who swidl our Civil Service to one person in eight. Not the slightest. And there will not be. Mr Massey and Mr Allen aro as completely cowed in this regard as the veriest and tawdriest socialist who would add yet more hundreds to the army ot tax supported not-wanteds. Take the cost of education. What has Mr Allen dono to cut it down. Nothing. Why ? Because he either coesn't know or won't. I make bold to say that if a man with a knowledge of this subject were at the head of education affairs and with a .Parliament to back him (.which he will never get) a clean sweep would be made of the Wellington bureaucracy with its superiluous secretaries, assistant secretaries, sub-assistant secretaries, inspectors, general inspectors, assistant general inspectors, et hoc genus omues to the betterment of education and of the teachers to try to live decently on their modest salaries.

As for education, the Massey Government do not intend to venture on aaythiug of the sort. On the contrary we have the egregious Mr E. M. B. Eisher boasting that his party are Paying out more in waj/es than were their predecessors, and we have another minister saying t hat of course the country will save nothing by the introduction of automatic telephones because the girls who will lose their billets will bo provided for elsewhere. And so the story runs throughout every branch ot government. Not a man, not a girl must be discharged. They must be provided for at the cost oi the State. Imagine a private employer who buys expensive machinery to save wages acting on the principle of paying his not-wanted hands their full wages as formerly ! The suggestion is preposterous, iet preposterous as it is that is the principle on which Zealand Governments act. Not that they are not aware of its llagrant and scandalous injustice to you and to me but because the men on whom they depend in Parliament are dependent in turn on that one person in every cigkt for whose keep New Zealand finds the wherewithal.

Thank God, we are not all fools. Some there are who see these things and what they will lead to and who say out what they think. Others see them and say nothing. And yet others vulgarly emery : Well, why not ? ain't everything ours ? Personally, i am on the Lord's side.