SIX OF ONE.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 13, 29 November 1919, Page 2

SIX OF ONE.

Half Doz. of the Other

IT is impossible for the electors of New Zealand to discriminate between thg; virtues of Liberalism and the nobilities of Reform. People who have temporarily removed their eyes from the land sale advertisements and the sporting news to read the reports of that other great gamble, politics, are presented with noble promises which, if carried out by the leader who "gets in," will bring Heaven to everyone's hearthstone, peace, joy, perfect satisfaction, a full stomach, and a full pocket.

Observe, if you please, that the two great leaders have minds singularly alike—they vary only in expression of their noble sentiments. True, if one offers eighteenpence, the other immediately "raises him" to one and ninepence—but on the whole the samples in the political bag are cut from the same length, and are all wool and a yard wide.

It occurs to one in scanning the thousands of columns of human nobility in the newspapers that it would be a crying shame to keep any candidate for Parliament outside the sacred portals of the House of _ Talk. Virtue oozes from a political leader perpetually, and if he would recognise, as we do, that the purity of his opponent is as beautiful a thing as his own purity, what a happy "land this would be! The position becomes exceedingly difficult, for the average elector would > like to put all the candidates in, and so have a Parliament comprising all the human virtues.

Never in the history of New Zealand has it been so possible to keep absolutely free from bias. With the glittering array of talent offering, blindfolded electors could choose a perfect Parliament. The future war of the Nations is to be a war of the

intellect and in this war New Zealand must join. It is therefore requisite and necessary that she chooses from the serried ranks of the candidates those whose genius burns brightest— a most difficult matter as one may see by a perusal of current literature, all of which shows that no man who is not a genius is offering his .services.