Notes of the Week

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

Notes of the Week

\\?l™ the general election apparently due in less than six weeks, and members hurrying through the business of parliament so as to be able to rush to the defence of their attacked seats, we will soon be plunged into the hurry and bustle, the talk and turmoil, the blast and counterblast of party political electioneering. Theoretically a general election is a period when the people call their representatives to give an account of their stewardship and pass solemn judgment on them —either sending them back with a fresh mandate or replacing them with other and better men. Practically it is a time when parties and factions strive by every means in their power to secure the return of men whose zeal to serve the country is qualified by, if not subordinated to, their anxiety to save party, class or sectional ends of some kind. And to attain that end, otherwise honourable, men will stick at little to advance the interests of their own candidates and ' discredit their opponents. It was Macaulay that said men would do for their party what they would blush to do for themselves, and the remark still holds good. An election, instead of being, what it ought to be, a calm appeal to reason and logic, a dignified exercise by the people of their kingly power to chose the ministers for a term and invest them with the delegated power to rule, becomes a party warfare, fought -with all the weapons of warfare apart Horn physical force sometimes even without that exception. The pitiful party squabbling, the petty personal issues raised, the slanderous statements whispered, the lies told and the half-truths, even more deadly, and the bitterness these create —all that tend to sicken people of politics and leave a legacy of illwill behind them when the election is a thing of the past. ******

JS this sort of thing inevitable? It appears to be, for every election seems! to be more bitter than the last. Government touches the lives and interests of the people at so many points now ; so many people have a direct material interest in the decisions involved in a general election, to advance their private interests or defend them if attacked, that they are often not very scrupulous as to the means they take to accomplish their enda. Then when the party partizan spirit is once roused with many people it is goodbye to reason and logic. And in the resultant sound and fury we are apt to lose sight of the fact that after all these are a miserable minority of any electorate, and that if the decent majority chose to exert themselves they could be quite easily suppressed. Let that decent majority once set themselves squarely against anything in the nature of unfair play during an election —especially by members of their own party—let them refuse to listen to malicious gossip and worse about any candidate, and when these unfair tacticsi are found not to pay they will die a speedy death. It is because lies and slanders are found to influence votes that they are circulated, and the blame really lies not only on the liars and slanderers but on the people who listen to them. Surely the manner of settling grave national issues should not fall below the level of a game of football, where an unfair player is ordered otf the field? Parties we will always have and party differences, but there is nothing in these, however fundamental the differences may be, to prevent us discussing them and voting with honesty, good temper and dignity. The candidate who cannot do so should be relegated to political obscurity, and the voter suppressed not only as a public nuisance but asi a danger to democracy.

we need at the present critical period is to send to parliament the wisest and best men we can secure, quite irrespective of their particular party labels—men who will frankly recognise the facts of our situation and devise sane and prudent measures to restore prosperity to our country. It isi a task that calls for the utmost wisdom of the wisest and most experienced among us. Such men shrink from exposing themselves to the malice and petty meannesses that accompany a political campaign at present, though it does not trouble the blatant politician, the ambitious climber, or the man with axes to grind, who can return that sort of thing with interest. And the country is a double loser—in failing to get the men who ought to be in parliament and getting the men who ought not to be.