THE USE OF POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17336, 6 December 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE USE OF POLITICS.

A HUMAN PURPOSE. BY MATANCA. Mr. Bertrand Russell, the Cambridge philosopher, who has done much clear and bold thinking on social questions, and incidentally written on e of the best sellers in the popular Home University Library, has declared in his " Political Ideals" that "there is nothing for the politician to consider outside or above the various men. women, and children who compose the world." The dictum is as sound as it is simple, but it comes into the atmosphere of a general election with something of a shock. Everyone who really thinks at all about politics agrees with the Cambridge radical. He has advanced nothing new. Legislation, of course, has no other reason for its existence than th e veriest human considerations. Parliament and police, statute and by-law, and all the vast machinery of law-making and law-adminis-tering, exist because men and women and children are constrained to live in company. And yet the machinery itself has. with its increase of complexity, absorbed attention as if it were something more than a to human ends. It is a way that machinery has invented to serve man's needs, it has made man a servant, demanding that he feed and groom and wait upon it without respite and daring him to neglect it at his peril. It is so with laws as with looms. We get absorbed in the means, and forget the ends. With every fresh remove from immediate and manual accomplishment of any human purpose, the forgetfulness of ends grow s. More than Mechanism. In politics this slavery to mechanism has victimised our human nature not a little \.e have spent much strength in fashioning' constitutions, and tinkered ceaselessly with the cogs and pinions of statecraft. Ihe relative merits of unicameral and bicameral systems have been arguecl with bitterness. Monarchy and Republicanism nave divided men into irreconcilable camps tor Free Trade family affections have been sacrificed, and over Home Rule many a handsome Irish head has been cracked. /Of course, these questions have human mportance and, equally of course, enthnaiaam about them has been not unpra.seworthy ; but the fact is that often. 1- ofte ,'\. the interest has been mor« emotional than intelligent, and that the human end to be served has been eclipsed by eagerness about the political means. Especially has this been the case where party politics has been a ruling influence f there is no tyranny on earth equal to that exercised by the party boss.- Ostens bly designed to serve the State, a party may come to enslave it. When politics de- ( generates into Sir Henry Maine's "eternal cricket match between blue and yellow " anv reTl- * ??* in , to enSUe ' With™t the alWedl" 0 "^ 86 of What iS at stake, the allegedly ■• free and independent" rally to rival standards •_ the primitive love of a p fight means more'to them than the in about TOderstandi "K of what it is all The Pragmatic Test. What we need is . an, application of pragma to politics-the testing of political ideals and creeds by their likelihood of serving •• the various" men, women and children.who compose the world." Professor William J & mes applied it to philosophy, resolutely uniting the frag mentary practical views of earlier thinkers in a demand that theories should be inenTgTa" " not mere a " SWel ' l ° intelJ ectual Oetwald the Leipsk chemist, employed science. lam accustomed," he said "to put questions to my classes in tbfs way In what f respects would the world "be fue "If I *" alt l" ati - or that We true. II can find nothing tha' would noTns, different, then the afternarivTS Professor W. 8. Franklin ha« said something similar as to physics : I thfnk that the sickliest notion of phvsics, even if. a student gets it, is that it is "The science of masses, molecules, and She ether; and I think that the healthiest get it"' is that a *"!«".**. science of get it, is that physics is the science of must be instruments: w want ™ of taking hold of things and 6 pushing them he human purpose of statesmanship ought never to be allowed out of St Reform may cease to be anything more than a party label; « Liberal"- mnv no more a programme, but a bannerette Labour may mean nothing better than a pyrotechnic splutter. Isles' their theories work ' and ensure a gain of arable 00 '' ShOUM be «A ™ !

11l fares th.. land, to haHen : Tj«* iP. a T>r»„ Where wealth accumulates. and men decly. Taxes and tenures, tariffs and banks, and all the rest of the mechanism of modern LTv y '^ USt be V d?ed b - v their humlS servK-eableness. It may well be that judged by that test, some rival theorSi may give little or no cause for preference the difference may be that " twt lueedledum and Tweedleieo," But in many other cases clear thinking v.,11 reveal a difference. b Humanised Politics. The place of children in the politician's regard » mva'uable as a special touch- ! 5t,,.. of 1 " lt „al .reeds. Where the v I have litt.e place the politician's outlook \ is inevitably material end meagre: where 1 consideration of them and their full deve- ' opine.it is uiven growing-room the real things of statesmanship are invariably ! present and influential. J ] The admission uf women to a larger place in the political world .should ensure better heed of the human element in politics _ Men have for centuries been engrossed in business. Consols and markets have been too mud, with them, perhaps, to permit the view of less obvi.-u, things that really mattered more. (Jettin.' and spending have rounded off th-ir ; life, may be. with a fatal completeness ' Jhe senses of the soul have become un- i seeing and deafened by reason of the dust and noise '' "'" peti'V machinerv men nave, i«; give them their due, manfully manage i. - : Tail.anient, as " no place or a woman, - ' was getting remote from the homes where j women lived and brought tip little cbildren With Lady .A.-tor settling down '" her place in the British House of Coinmo-n.-. and lady -andidales for i'a. liam.-ntary duty seeking the suffrages ~t ' New Zealand electors. pari anient ' mav her ,me less .einote from home. ('.are tJr child :ile should have increased attention, at ail evi-nts. A I'""'- old woman, walking d.rwn a town -""'• -'.-1-1 !|( ,, v and then to pick up someth,'!.- and put it into her apr"ii. A p-h. ..•Mini, growing su,-.»-,.ai, d.in d-d v.nat >h. was picking un " Here v,-u a:-.- .aid she; !,,.,- air.'n «' is lull " : >' ! " of broken class, mo.-tiy pieces ..I b. tt!e, - [).,. ho' ' fin- ,„,!„.«;. man laughed : " coin.; to put them 1-1 -"in.: mortar . n tb.. |~p of v ..iir garden wall. moth.-i ' "Sol m.-.'" she said . 'I'm going to throw them a«av." "H'm," the ..Hirer muttered : " j,j t mad. aren't voii. mother':' • N,,t rue; vol. know the. hoys and .'ills what p| .-, .* here when t i,.. v ain't at >. ■,■ ".'" ||e , ~,tain!v did •Well. I.'— ;...«,■ p.- t and b"itt<„.-- ' u '".5&. 11 '" hot t!,v l-av.-. '-"' U, lts and . S**Wi'Kin. r ? 'ft an.l p.ay- in their hare feet. I'li'icrst .ml? So 1 ; : k.- up these and ' throws them where ti.ey ,-.,„ L hurt any-| one. See.' J bat woman was wise m a.! way that Mr. Kertrand Kussell'a sort of I po-iiLciana may well be. i