THE ART OF GOVERNING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 12 March 1930, Page 8

THE ART OF GOVERNING

POLITICAL PRINCIPLES “Abuse of the politician is nothing new, and up to a certain point it is inevitable at the hands of his political opponents ; but that is quite another thing from distrust in or contempt for the politician as such. Men must h e governed; t here is accordingly an art of .governing them, and it behoves the politician’s critics to understand its principles,” The 'l'inics” remarked recently, in an editcnial review of Mr F. S. Oliver’s biography of Walpole. “The politician is essentially a man of action, or he would not he iii’ politics, slow as he may seem to Re when we demand that ‘something should he done,’ obtuse of vision as lie may appear when prophets and revivalists are unfolding tbeir dreams or common men in a panic are foretelling the instant end of everything. Call him unimaginative if you like, hut allow linn his faith, for no’ one without faith would willingly choose his rough-and-tumble path in life; and remember that the public if it has its ideals, has also its many idol’s, which it often worships blindly. The politician, being a practical man, has to get tilings done now, weighing this force and that, a master of accommodation; lint lie must also be of a valiant courage and of an imperturbably good temper, for lie may live to see Ins dearest projects undone and have to look for comfort only in himself . . . It is the politician’s first principle to keep m the saddle. By so doing he shows that he is in earnest, as all men like themselves to be thought, that he has confidence in himself, and more confidence in lumselt than in anyone else. There is no ground for denouncing politicians as a species. To a large extent, however, the art of governing remains constant and the politician stands forth as a well-defined type. And the politician will be a failure i’t he fails to conform to the type, for under representative government he will soon he out, of office if he has ever at- ! tained it, while under a less wholesome Constitution he. may even have brought about, a revolution. Even in that event lie will have left all the more work for men of the true type to do afterwards, for after a resolution comes reaction, and with it the call for the politician as salvage. man—a call which, as history has constantly shown, never goes for very long unanswered.”