SEEKING A SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19141, 6 October 1925, Page 8

SEEKING A SETTLEMENT.

The Prime Minister's efforts to promote a settlement of the seamen's strike, so far as it affects the Dominion, merit cordial approval. The trouble has arisen at a time when there is a call for Mr. Coates' energies in marshalling his forces for his first general election, soon after taking the leadership of his political party. But he evidently does not forget that the duty of the country's First Servant —for so his title of Prime Minister may be more revealingly expressed—is to put the country before party. The public weal is at stake. The strike has severely hampered the Dominion's export trade. So long as our oversea shipping is held up heavy loss is being inflicted. It falls, in this instance, first upon those whose livelihood is got from dairy products. That farmers and dairy companies are complaining is an inevitable outcome of the strike. Not only for themselves, but for those whom they employ, they have made appeals for the Prime Minister's intervention, and are promising him support in any action he may feel constrained to take to get the Dominion's chief products transported to the oversea market. To these appeals he could not be heedless. He well knows, as does every thinking man and woman in the community, that the hardships inflicted on the dairy producers, employing and employed, must speedily injure every other industry in the Dominion and eventually, if the evil be not checked, bring widespread disaster. He has shouldered the responsibility entailed by this menace. He can be confident of public aid should the method of inquiry and conference fail so completely as to make other action necessary, but the trial of that method is his first duty. Nothing can be predicted at this juncture, but it is satisfactory that, with his aid, conference is proceeding. An indefinite prolonging of the present position would be utterly intolerable, and the general public, whose well-being is jeopard ised, may well be impatient for finality to be reached. It will be brought appreciably nearer by the eliciting of facts, the frank discussion of grievances, and the careful weighing of the antagonistic opinions of the parties in conflict. The conference, if it be conducted in this fashion, should go far to effect a settlement, and Mr. Coates' characteristic earnestness and eagerness to get things done may be trusted to influence its parties to take that way.