THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22069, 27 September 1933, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Watfabeb.

Mr Downie Stewart is one of those who believe in the common people and their inalienable right to miscontrol their destinies. Mr Downie Stewart believes in freedom—freedom at any price: “ I prefer less efficiency and more freedom.” It is an estimable, even a noble conception, and we are in accord with him as reported from Toronto. We are, that is to say, in accord with the theory. But Mr Downie Stewart, as a politician who is also an intelligent man, should have made it clear to, his hearers that when he said freedom he meant freedom.

Says the Devil to Mendoza in Mr Shaw’s “ Man and Superman ”:— . . . for Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do. Mr Downie Stewart knows as well as we do that the freedom which British democrats boast is circumscribed. These are a few things we cannot do in a fjree country (assuming, of course, that as good democrats we obey implicitly the laws we have made for ourselves); — Get a drink at a pub after six Take our hard-earned half-crowns out of the country Sing in the street (at least, one is not advised to do so) Buy cigarettes' on Sunday Permit the chimney to catch fire Visit the gardens after dusk Play fan-tan Cool ourselves in public fountains Have a sweepstake flutter Or a drink at a public dance Spend £1 overseas and get twenty shillings’ worth Our freedom, we would say, with full respect for the idealism of Mr Downie Stewart, resembles the leisure permitted to the farm domestic by her legendary employer: “Well, you rise at 4.30 and milk the cows, clean the cans, and drive the milk to the factory; you make the breakfast, pump the water, put on the dinner, scrub the yard, make the beds, polish the floors, serve the meal; you wash the dishes, take the children out, set the fires, make tea for the men, bake, prepare supper, rinse the clothes, milk the cows, clean the cans, do the ironing, bring in tea at 9 p.m.—and the rest of the day you may have to yourself.”

Mr Forbes, who is more realistic, does not tell us we can do as we like. lie knows, and we know, that the Government’s in for a long time and we have to stand for it. If we won’t—-well that means gaol or Socialism, which in the present mood of its disciples seems to amount to the same thing for most of us, with' plenty of hard labour sentences. It is this knowledge, perhaps, which inclines Mr Forbes to approve Mr Roosevelt’s appeal to American patriotism. The National Recovery campaign is conducted on like edifying lines. “We appeal to you,” Mr Roosevelt and his colleagues say in effect, “to be bighearted, 100 per cent. Americans, full of vision and confidence and faith in our immortal destiny." So wages are raised, unemployment diminishes, the dollar deflates, and there’s more money to spend and plenty to buy with it. It all seems painless and simple, though employers with businesses running at a loss and production out-reaching consumption have their doubts. The reward for doubters is swift and certain. Says General Johnson, administrator of the N.R.A.:—•

They’ll get a sock right on the nose! This is very undemocratic. But so is the “nation’s Number One Democrat” —ns they style Mr Roosevelt —becoming, in many of his deeds. Is this why Mr Forbes admires him?

Or does Mr Forbes take to heart the lesson with which the sleeping children were ceaselessly “ conditioned ” in “ Brave New World”?

Government’s an affair of sitting, not

hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. At any rate, the Government is sitting now, we trust with some of its active consciousness circulating in that upper portion of the anatomy over which the honourable members place their honourable hats. The time is not meet for an entirely posticous government.

Something has happened in the New Zealand Parliament, which even the Oldest Member, shaking his heavy head, cannot parallel nor prognosticate upon. Not that it is without parallel. Hear, for instance Lysistrata , speaking (through the courtesy of Gilbert Murray) full many a day before our Oldest Member first raised his voice in peroration:— .

You never allowed us to utter a sound, But you needn’t imagine, for that That our thoughts were content. watched what, you did, And sometimes, perhaps as we sat - In our rooms, we would hear of mistakes you had made Oh some first-rate public affair; Then, pain in our hearts and a smile on our lips, We would ask with an Innocent air, "Did the peace-offer come to the Council to-day? And what was it settled to do? And will the decree be inscribed on the stone? ” "Be off! That’s nothing to you.” Said my husband. “ You Just hold your tongue.” So I held it. Women have taken a hand in politics in the past without having been dealt one; but now, in our enlightenment, we have given them a deal. The Oldest Member, perhaps, will need to look alert in his play. There are penetrating ladies who could call anyone’s bluff.

Whatever there is of ease and confidence in those who are now sitting, but not refraining entirely from hitting, in Parliament House, even the most assured cannot be unaware that a new element has entered New Zealand politics. Woman, Wilde has said, should be made love to if she is pretty, and ignored if she is plain; but he lived in the Dark Ages of four decades ago, when woman could be neatly pigeon-holed and “ The Princess ’’ was regarded as a polite, if somewhat daring, fantasy. Spake the militant emancipationist-in-chief of Tennyson’s feminine university citadel:—

On me, me, me, the storm first breaks; I dare ■ All these male thunderbolts; what Is It ye fear: • . . . myself were like enough, 0 girls, To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, And clad In Iron burst the ranks of war, Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, Die . . . It might be Hippolyte, she of the Amazonian girdle, who speaks; or Boadicea; or it might be the shade of Mrs Pankhurst, or the voice of Lady Astor — or of a female warrior nearer home. What matters is that the barriers are down, and the sanctity of the House can no longer be masculinely exclusive. Next open the clubs to women, and their victory over the reticences of the male will be terrible and complete.

Women, as we remarked, have been in politics long, but it is only recently they have fought upon the hustings for j their place, in strident opposition to | men. Time was when their influence | was more subtly spelled. Helen had no | need to give notice of motion in the i assembly places of the Troad in order ; to get under weigh that naval building programme with which the poet credits her; Cleopatra’s diplomatic advances were never made in Parliament; neither ( did Messalina play the game of politics in the forum; nor de Maintenon and the Pompadour make and break Ministers by perorating in the Chamber. Women have made kingdoms, lost

empires, and caused statesmen to quail. Women have shaped the destinies of uncounted thousands, and held all but divine power cupped in their shapely hands; but it is only in our time they have considered it necessary to appeal to democracy for the license to do so. Can it be that their entry into the brawling political arena is a sign of their decline?

Northern papers, reporting a bomb explosion in the bedroom of an Australian Crown prosecutor, state that the crime is believed to have been committed by someone with a grudge against him. Shade of Sherlock Holmes _ (patronisingly): “To the trained criminologist it is a comparatively simple matter of deduction, my dear Watson! ”

Dress reform news, as' reported in the enlightened press: “ Mrs , in a rug at present on view' in_ the city, shows what can be done by an intelligent woman with New Zealand wool at her disposal.”

Miss Jennie Street, of England, declared at a W.C.T.U. meeting in the north that the United States had adopted prohibition before the people were sufficiently educated to appreciate its advantages. It took the highlycultivated gangsters to discover that these were numerous,