THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1909. THE TENDENCY TO DRIFT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 13948, 2 January 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1909. THE TENDENCY TO DRIFT.

At the outset of the New Year, we look back with : complacency on the achievements of the past, and forward with confident hope to the results of the coming twelve months, which are, of course, to throw all previous records into the shade. We have undoubtedly a.knack of making progress. To go no further afield for proof, this Dominion of ours, and this, our Queen City of the North, are standing and convincing evidences of our racial capabilities in this respect. But, nevertheless, we seem, as a people, to have no definite objectives, but just to go on from day to day and year to year as circumstances lead us, co drift rather than steer a marked-out course to any particular goal. Crises never find us prepared. It never occurs to us to. meet them until we are brought absolutely face to face with them. In our military history our initial campaigns have always been carried on in the face of cru-

cial difficulties which ought never to have been encountered, and 1 would not had the officials of the' War Department looked intelligently ahead. The Boer war only added one more to the long list of ' unprepared-for emergencies. In naval matters it has been the same.. Look at the state of unpreparedness in which the Spanish Armada found us, though we had ample warning of its coming. The action had actually to be suspended because Howard and Drake had not powder to carry it on with ! Read how Nelson and other commanders habitually chafed under their chronic inability to obtain absolutely necessary supplies! But the lessons of the past are lost on us. Lord Roberts is preaching to deaf ears when he says England can be invaded, and will be invaded unless more adequate means of defence are provided. We can hardly throw stones at other people, however, in that matter. We live in glass houses ourselves. Are we not living in a fool's paradise, and pursuing a mere policy of drift in the matter of national defence, reckless of the rude awakening our culpable neglect will some day entail?

An inability to forecast the future, to project ourselves mentally out of the present, to accurately estimate the trend of things elsewhere, to discern the definite objectives \of others, and to shape out a course, correspondingly for ourselves, seems to run in our blood. The English rulers and statesmen possessed of ideals and who steadily pressed onto a foreseen goal might be counted on the lingers of the hand. We have built up an Empire, but how? Not of set purpose, but rather by force of circumstances by accident, as we might say. No Napoleon or Peter the Great directed operations. At no stage of the business have we had any preconceived scheme to follow out to a logical conclusion. Our greatness has been almost thrust upon us — only achieved under pressure of circumstances we would have resisted if we could. It was sorely against the grain that the British Government, in 1840, threw the tegis of its protection over New Zealand. Had not Mr. Wakefield forced the Ministerial hand it would never have been done. The Empire was too large already, Wellington said the Government certainly had no intention to extend it, and, if it had, New Zealand was about the last place it would think of annexing! This is but a type of our whole Imperial policy. It is one of pure drift, without an effort at control. Fifty years ago, sorely against our will, we had to take India over from the East India Company, and there we are to-day. But does anyone know what we are going to do with the country, or has anyone an idea of the goal towards which we ought 1 to be pressing? The policy of the Home authorities seems to be purely of a hand-to-mouth description. Turn to Egypt; a-quarter of a century ago we were forced to interfere there, to save it, in the interests of the European bondholders, from the insolvency into which the reckless extravagances of the Khedive had plunged it. -There we are still, but without any clear idea of how long we shall remain, or what is to be the end of the present notoriously tentative condition of things. Has the Home Government to-day any clear-cut ideals on the subject of linking together in closer union — a union which shall stand the test of time —the fortuitous congeries of States which constitute the Empire? Apparently not. We are inclined to think colonial statesmen look further ahead —think more Imperially, as the phrase runs— the Home authorities. Theirs is foundation work, arid it necessitates having some idea of the future edifice. In Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mr. Alfred Deakin, the late Mr. Seddon and Sir George Grey, we recognise a prevision and a grasp of the true proportions of things which is denied to men of narrower horizons, so much occupied in grappling with present evils resulting from past unwisdom to look very far ahead, so concentrated on congested home affairs as to have little time to bestow on outside business, or to realise its possible bearings on the matters they have in hand.

But though this may be true in Imperial affairs, it seems to us there is still need of more definite objectives in our domestic policy. In that, opportunism seems —now, at any rateto be the watchword. There is apparent no clear conception of the issue. Our legislation is patchworky, piecemeal sort of stuff, not half ■ well enough thought out, and needing constant modification to meet needs that ought to have been clearly foreseen and duly provided for at the outset. And what about civic affairs? Is there not in them a great need for looking ahead, and seeing that while we are busy remedying the blundering want of foresight in the past, we are not entailing a precisely similar task on succeeding generations? Towns and cities grow up in a haphazard, illregulated way, instead of being built up, like Washington, in accordance with a bold plan conceived at the outset and laid down then for future guidance. Public buildings are erected to serve a mere temporary turn, on sites which will admit of no extension in the future. Then, when urgent necessity arises, no suitable site is obtainable except by a huge initial expenditure and a cost for clearing which cramps the

proportions ■' and mars the beauty and impressiveness of the building itself. Wherever we look there seems to be a necessity for greater foresight and for so' shaping our course in the present as to attain a resolved-on clearly-contemplated goal in the end. The difficulties which block the way of Greater Auckland might all have been obviated had the founders of the city had clearer ideas of what it might possibly grow to, and made provision accordingly. Their thoughts extended only to a few acres; they should have taken in several square miles, as Sir George Grey originally intended. But that is just our racial tendency displayed in a particular direction. In their place we should probably have done very similarly But, knowing our weakness, it should be our endeavour to correct it; and the New Year seems a good time for resolving to try, at any rate, to direct progress more, and restrain the tendency of things to mere drift—to set some definite goal before us to be reached in the course of the next twelve months, if resolute exertion in that direction will permit. We should thus have fewer mistakes to correct in the future, and our progress in all directions would be far more stable and uniform.