THE ELECTION ISSUE

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 10

THE ELECTION ISSUE

THE choice that will be placed before the electors will be simple in principle though complicated enough in detail. Will we, in view of the serious position in which we find ourselves along with the rest of the world, face the facts of the situation honestly, and as practical men set ourselves to find the way out without hampering ourselves with prejudices against this or that political or social theory or proposal. Forty years ago New Zealand was facing a similar crisis and embarked on a new and untried path of change amid the dismal prophesies of ruin of all the believers in the good old ways. Our innovaters then were not devotees of any social theories, they were practical men seeking practical remedies for pressing evils, and frankly recognising that times had changed, held it was necessary that men should change with them. Today our problems are at bottom the same, but we have their experience to profit by, and the remedies are neither new-nor untried. Since their day the problem of production has been solved, there only remains the lesser problem of distribution. We have a country more richly endowed by Nature than most, we have an active, intelligent, and comparatively a welleducated people, anxious on the whole to do the right by others as well as themselves, who will cheerfully follow wise leadership along new and even dangerous-looking' social paths if they are likely to bring relief. Will that leadership be forthcoming? Once, largely by accident it must by admitted, New Zealand led the world in successful social change. Since then we have been content to follow others, we have, in the Biblical phrase, settled on our lees. But the chance to occupy a modest place in the van of progress is still open to us. We can make social experiments with a tithe of the disturbance these cause in older countries. But have we the requisite courage?