PLAY FAIR!

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 45, 17 July 1915, Page 3

PLAY FAIR!

Or AH We Know!

LET us waive party!" shouts the politician to the papers. "Let us smash the other party," still whispers the party politician to his pal. "Empire First!" screams the politician to. the many-headed. "Which side is the butter on?" asks the party politician to his reflection in the shaving mirror. Those breezy patriots the Ministry, never hitherto suspected of humour, have disclosed the fact that they are uproarious farceurs. "Let us unite, dear friends, and save our bleeding Empire. Let us coagulate, coalesce, and be bound in an executive fraternity severable only by cessation ot world hostilities. Let us forget, on Liberal brothers and Reform relatives, that salaries exist. There is but one goal, political, national, popular, Imperial—the War." So, simply oozing fraternity, the reigning party suggests the only possible way to smash fraternity, to obscure the great issue, and to wage paltry party strife.

"We will, if it is insisted," say the ruling bureau, "give to the political enemy (who is now our friend 1 ) the least possible power to play with—three little harmless places in the executive, which they may hold on sufferance. Thus shall we cement the 'bond of friendship, scotch the partisan serpent, and keep the largest possible hold on any power that is to be wielded." The offer of the Government is in exact accord with the usual principles of politics —to hold on like grim death to all possible privileges. The party in power, judging all parties by itself, reasonably assumes that even representation of both sides in politics on a coalition ministry would! emasculate its own power subsequently; The Opposition in Parliament is half of the whole members in Parliament. The Opposition, by the new system of war fraternity, is pledged not to try to defeat the Government by any tactics of the vote of no-con-fidence method.. "Under the circumstances, therefore, it would seem that equal representation on the Executive is the only "sporting way of meeting the emergency.

The refusal to give. equal representation is a refusal to recognise the rights of electors, who alone are the arbiters of political destinies, and this refusal will react possibly to the detriment of the party that refuses. Worst of all, the offer ot ineffective representationi on the Executive foments instead of allays the spirit of bickering that has hitherto been the basis of the whole political structure. A fraternity under the circumstances is impossible. One speculates on the possibility or equally balanced, coalition if Liberal ism had held the rein®, and-, knowing that the spirit of plunder is not the sole possession of any party, one believes that Liberals might have guarded' the personal cash chest with the same care as the Tories are now doing. This does not weaken

the contention! that the party spirit as it as to be still carried on is an evil. An equally balanced ministry at this extraordinary crisis would not be in a humiliating condition of perpetual excuses for blunders committed/ The necessity of constant excuses and apologetic appeals to the people to save Ministerial salaries could not arrive were each party equally represented and all people represented; ••■■'•

It ie one of the peculiarities of party government that it existed! for many decades in Britain, and was considered the only reasonable method when the country was at peace. When the Empire is faced # with the gravest concerns in the history of

any Empire, party is actually eliminated as the only basis for effective administration. If a British, Ministry of all parties is the most effective tool with which to prosecute the Empire's business in time of war, it will be the most effective Ministry when longed-for peace comes again. Presumably, however, throughout the Embire Governments will revert to the old bickering system and make _ politics the same game of chance with the same prizes to the successful gamblers as of yore. In the case of New Zealand the one party is entrenched behind its privileges and the other attacks them, both failing to appreciate the point that the People have anything to do with the matter at all.