PARTIES AND THE EMPIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18324, 14 February 1923, Page 8

PARTIES AND THE EMPIRE.

The directness of Mr. Downie Stewart's speech serves to set clearly before the country the divergent attitudes of the Government and the Liberal Party on matters of merely partisan importance. In view of that speech, the Government is entitled to full credit for putting broad national issues before party advantage. In order to secure, at a time of serious need, a firmly established Administration, the Government has made a further definite appeal to the Liberals, suggesting fusion and offering portfolios. In voicing this proposal, renewed now across the floor of the House, Mr. Downie Stewart has emphasised the slenderness of the line of demarcation between the two parties, and urged that the serious position of the country should compel review of the artificial alignments of party that have obtained hitherto. He has called attention to the summary way in which the suggestion was first received by the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Wilford then refused it serious consideration, and " banged, barred, and bolted the door against it. There has really been no answer to the suggestion; a reply that merely caricatured the Government and uttered platitudes about Liberalism's past was no answer. The practical issue has never been faced- The desirability of some working understanding being reached has been increased considerably by the urgent necessity for the Dominion's participating in the Imperial economic conference proposed by Mr. Bonar Law. It is obvious that, without some fusion of forces between the Government and the Liberal Party, no . Cabinet Minister could, in the present state of party politics here, be spared to attend the conference. The, responsibility for hindering the transaction, of urgent Imperial business lies upon Mr. Wilford and his party. Momentous questions of Imperial policy are out-weighed, apparently, in their judgment by the zest of a " sham fight in domestic politics. The need could be met by an arrangement of a merely temporary nature, as Mr. Downie Stewart indicates. If even this should be dismissed without serious consideration, as seems likely, the country will suspect that the platform periods of Mr. Wilford and his colleagues about Imperial questions are but mock heroics.