The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1914. N.Z. AT THE EMPIRE CLUB

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8683, 17 March 1914, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1914. N.Z. AT THE EMPIRE CLUB

After twelve years of life, most of them academic, the League of Empire has formed a Now' Zealand branch. During January last this branch held a meeting at the Empire Club, with a great attendance, under the chairmanship of the High Commissioner, wjio opened the proceedings with a speech of considerable significance. It was designed apparently to show tho heart of the Empire that tho legislation by which Now Zealand lias dazzled some good people and amazed others is now the political creed of a united people. The Hon. T. Mackenzie introduced tho subject by saying that New Zealanders were generally supposed to have gone in for extreme Socialistic legislation. He told those present that he had himself as a member of Parliament opposed some of those measures, but time and experience had convinced him that quite a number of them had been of very great benefit to New Zealand. Now', tho man who said this has been appointed to his high representative New Zealand office by the present Tory Gbvernment of the country. It will bo deduced that, therefore, he represents as regards the legislation in question the views of the members of that Government. Ergo, the whole Dominion population is a people united in its acceptance of some very excellent and much-discussed legislation of proved sterling character. Nd one .would dream from the report of the meeting that the opposition offered by both to the long list of measures in question had been of the, fiercest, the most nilcompromising, and the most persistent; New Zealanders know 'differently, aiid the vast majority of them will remem : her when the time comes for a practical backing of their opinion. But as a theory for outside consumption no one will be likely to find any fault With the High Commissioner’s deliverance, especially as tho main fact ho has thrown into bold relief, where millions Can see it clearly, is that the great bsdy of legislation, at one time so- startling and now so generally acceptable, for which the Liberal Governments of twenty-olie years were responsible, has proved so magnificently successful as to. actually have gained the approval of its opponents. This eminent service to the cause of democratic progress in Britain, was repeated in very successful style by Dr Oliapple, who in _ his description of the modus operandi, went to the very core of the subject. He pointed out that the very thing which restrained the reformers of the Old World, the lack of precedents, actually encouraged them in the new. In the former they relied more on precedent; in the latter they took their stand more on reason. This view Sir Frederic Pollock developed with all the force of his high position as professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, and all the weight of his great legal standing. He likened the spirit of legislative reform in New Zealand to the spirit of the common law always ready to face new circumstances and ever trying to avoid doing moro than was required by the necessities of the moment. In this comparison lies the best reply , to the shallow criticism which finds proof of weakness instead of strength in the numerous amendments on our -statute - book. Sir Frederick, coming from the general to the particular, endorsed the emphatic eulogy bestowed by Dr Chappie on the principle of compulsory arbitration. He, did not repeat the doctor’s arguments. He to them his own statement that in England they are already on the road to compulsory arbitration as the only possible deliverance from the epidemic of strikes. Sir.. Frederick is not deterred by the common fear of the consequences. Most' people in England think what the opponents of arbitration once thought in New Zealand, that the gaols will not be big enough to look up all the recalcitrants. Sir Frederick know*, what we are discovering in New Zealand, that a proper system of arbitration which gives to trained judgment the aid of all the expert knowledge special to every 'possible case, finds out the irreducible minimum of stupidity and malevolence which is nowhere big enough to fill a single gaol. The fun of the evening was supplied by Air Edward Wakefield, so wellknown here some, decades since as one of the most brilliant journalists New Zealand has produced. That he had some of the talent of the head of the family of the notable Wakefields never was disputed. His experience of politics and his knowledge of affairs was derived from his service as private secretary to Sir E. Stafford, and later clerk of the Executive. In journalism he made his name on . the “Timaru Herald,” and in politics he once attained Cabinet rank only to bold it a few hours. Ho was present with his brother New Zealanders at tho meeting. to which he was introduced by the chairman as a son of one of the founders of the Dominion. But ho soon made it clear that he held no brief for a united New Zealand. For him the past held no charm. His speech produces a .strange impression. . He seemed to speak ns one who finding on arrival in Britain that the crusted Tory of the old typo was extinct, had dug up a specimen, set it on a pedestal and formed himself upon it. To hear him airing the sentiments of the type with all the brilliancy and verve of style, and oven more than the boldness of language for which be was here so remarkable must have amused the meeting greatly. Hi?, speech must have interested them too, for it carried them back to tho. very early clays. But the predominant note was railing.

Ho railed at Ballance. at Stout, at Reeves, at Grey. He denounced the old cry for “Separation” which arose in tho South, rightly; and he ascribed the public works policy of Sir Julius Vogel to a desire to stop that cry, quite wrongly. He described that policy as thoroughly Socialistic and a complete failure. From his speech one might imagine a horde of unemployed anarchists let loose by tho policy, roaming wild over town and country to-day. Absurd, of course. His denunciations of corruption rival anything to be found in burlesque, his emphatic declaration that not a shilling should ever have been borrowed for public works reminds us that the only thing this brilliant genius was loyal to throughout that breezy speech was wrong. We mean, of course, the memory of the Stafford prediction that the whole country must go headlong to the dogs. For a man to get up to-day and try to prove that we are all in rains because Sir E. Stafford forty-five long eventful years ago said we . should be, is to dhow that his mind has stayed where the famous Premier’s speech left off. According to this most able and most characteristic Ne w Zealander, all the policies that- have ever been in this Dominion are in that pact of the pavement of the Pit where the good intentions are. But he has forgotten the circumstances of his own first election to the House of Representatives. Ho says he went to a district where ho was not known, lest some of his views against the provinces might procure his defeat. To this he attributes his election. But the district was Geraldine, and there was no district in all the Dominion at that day that knew Wakefield so Well, as the brilliant editor of the Timaru “Herald,” published within twenty miles of its central township. In face of that no one could, take him .as a reliable authority for all his brilliancy and engaging audacity of the shallowest invective. Professor AVhite and the High Commissioner covered up Ilia tracks gently, with a ' few sprinklings of fact, complimented him cordially on the brilliancy that survives in him so brightly, and the veil descended ,on a ceremony pleasing because it has brought this Dominion so instructively before the central public of the Empire.