NATIONAL EFFICIENCY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16283, 10 July 1917, Page 4

NATIONAL EFFICIENCY.

To the Editor of the "Tirnaru Horald."

Sir,—l was q\rite expecting to hear, in your columns an echo of the applause which greeted Mr-- Burnett's lecture at the Cave. It was a matter of surprise that my expectations were so long of realisation. Still I .was" hardly prepared for the homa,ge paid to , man and speech. Mr Burnett, has ceased to be an ordinary mortal. He is no longer the "plain man from tho gorges." He is a seor. During my sojourn in South Canterbury I have not heard much, of (this seor until quite recently. Maybe he has been too busy trafficking with the King of MoVh to tell lis what he has seen from the rocks and the hill tops. If : ihe tents of the Teutonic host have boon revealed to him, or if hv that prophetic insight of his lie has perceived them, we *do not remember to have heard him -warn us "who shall count their numbers, or that of their fourth part." Unlike Roberts and Blatch'ford h<y has been too busy trafficking with Balak, or 't. lc ' las beheld the vision like the King of Babylon it has gone from him until now. What our Beer did see; however, and saw and remembers veryi clearly was—-the type of man produced in pre-franchise days. He saw the rise and watched the progress of unionism, and his last vision appears to bo the parting of the ways to . National Efficiency in the pressure' of unionism to improve the conditions of the ma.sses rather than. by tho masses, improving their own conditions by the time-hon-oured methods of personal exertion and thrift. The type of man produced in pre-franchise to have been a wlii'oe r*azzy "Wuzzy. A first class fighting manj a regiment of . German infa.utry would not. disconcert him in. tho least. I have talked with 'a good number of him, fifty, sixty, and three score and ten years of ago. You find him carrying his swag in the way backs, or m the old men's homo. Ho does not appear to have fared too well, or the tim«>honoured methods- were no': his. So few of them seem to have got a. decent slico of this new countrv, though "they could nolu be put wrong at a, job, 5 and were no crawling knaves" " h'ere- lies, tho reason? ' I heard the late Mr Seddon say , from the steps of tho Timaru Railway Station, "it is a shame to think, now the patrimonv or tlie people has been frittered away." frittered away—ay, the. Jacobs were busy in those days while Esau procured the venison. He has gone on procuring it ever since, but not for his [own eating: Mr Burnett says: "Efficiency was largely a matter of the political conditions of a people plus the degree of prospierity enjoyed by them." So the foundation of our inefficiency to-day was laid under a political system, an industrial system, and a prosperity which satisfied .the grab-all propensities of the few to the disadvantage of the "many. In the days when the industrial rulers liad a "way of saying "Mend your ways my lad this day or you'll be sacked to-morrow," , V'. eal parting of, the ways to National Efficiency began. It was in the days when men saw the t well watered plains and seized them-, only to be redeemed by the payment of a great sum from their gripping hands, and made available to those who had made them valuable but had received scant degree o: prosperity in return. To the pre-fran-chise days (for which the author of "Tussock Seed" sighs) when industrial i ulers abused t-heir power in manv ways, is to be attributed the rise of that unionism which to-day demands that war profits shall cease. "Tho loafers of "the towns would sooner go into their six by two than do a day's work except at a wage equivalent to a share in the property." "What a parting of the ways is here. "What prospect of them ever coming together again ? The very suggestions of our seer are answer. "Efface self" a grand suggestion truly; but what a consistent suggestor! "Become State servants.'" '•Forego all profits," "Pull together." So shall we escape the crash of the structure of efficiency built upon the rotten foundation of our war profits. "The extraordinary power created and used by a nation organised with every human atom had greatly impressed the world." There appears to hi no parting of the ways here. Tho Reichstag numbered' more Socialists than any legislative body in the world. W hen organised, Labour placed its members in the majority in Australian States. Did the population become less thrifty:-' Bid they cease ill their exertions to win sufficient to justify them maintaining their title to honesty? Is it. not a fact that in one Australian State sf Bill was in trod need named ''The right to work"'? The extraordinary power exerted by the holders of the heritage of mankind in alienating people from the land, in allowing industries to lie dormant except in so

far as they contributed to their greedy ends, is amongst the most pregnant reasons for inefficiency. While our shipping has had to struggle on as best it could German v°' itj cans saw that their Imes were subsidised, enabling trermau goods to 6e freighted to foreign countries at rates that beat the surtax, lhat organised labour should be placed m the parting of the ways is so much nonsense when we reflect tuat barely a dozen years hare-elapsed since it took its place among tho world; s exponents of the art of ruling. And. its justification'is worthy of final consideration., Let it be remembered that the unions of the Empire have not been responsible for locking up the lands of Britain :till the breath of famine. blows chill o'er the land.. Let it not be forgotten, that were it 'not for oiganised „la.bour,, at the outbreak of war, many_ things unpleasant to contemplate might have come to pass. Let' us always remember the grand efforts' or .■"he organised and efficient arms- of tlie mercantile service" of whom T think 1!} varlyle's saying, "Doughtiness— Courage—and the faculty to do."—l air., etc., ' " ELIHTJ. 1 July 5, 1917.