"STRATFORD EVENING POST" SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929. POLITICS WITHOUT PARTY.

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 76, 3 August 1929, Page 4

"STRATFORD EVENING POST" SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929. POLITICS WITHOUT PARTY.

ONE of the methods at' getting rid of superfluous wealth in America is to offer prizes for political and international suggestions which no one has any intention of accepting, says the Christchurch Press. In New Zealand idealism is subject to none of these temptations. No one offers a thousand or ten thousand pounds for the best method of persuading men to work or women not to weep or politicians to he statesmen and Christians, and it is all the more remarkable therefore when Ave evolve these plans free, gratis, and for nothing. The new Association that has been formed in Wellington—it does not yet call itself a Party has for the chief planks in its platform opposition to Socialism and opposition to undue Government interference with private enterprise. It proposes, that is to say, to do something which sreatly requires to be done, and which a majority of people in New Zealand certainly wish to have done. Put it proposes also to "promote, irrespective of Party politics, the candidature for ami. return to Parliament of persons who are best qualified to represent the. public." or in plain English to make Parliament good and wise. Again tins is something that ought to bp done, something. that is worth time, money, lab-i our, fasting, and prayer. Tt is \ even possible, as th<> President i hopes that (he nhvtfovin "will | anpeal to a considerable section f of electors," since lire numb" 1 '! of earnest people in the world is j far larger than is generally sup-

posed, and as large in New Zealand, in proportion to the total population, as any where > else on earth. Par more fantastic -plans for the improvement oi society have been announced in the past, and there is no reason to doubt that this one Iras _ had "much time and consideration," and that "measures for the benefit of the people generally" is a soul-stirring slogan. But it is curious to find people solemnly suggesting in 1929 that the benefit of the people generally is more likely to be secured by a Parliament in which every member is a law to himself than by one in which there is discipline and organisation. It was, we thinir, Mr Balfour who first said that politics are "an organised quarrel". If we eliminate Party the organisation goes and the quarrels remain, multiplied by the number of? possible groups of two in a: House of eighty members, and complicated by all the fads, prejudices, and fanaticisms of each individual.