The Waikato Independent THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1934. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3227, 1 November 1934, Page 4

The Waikato Independent THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1934. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CAN EDUCATION SAVE . DEMOCRACY ? “How can the ordinary busy citizen, preoccupied with his personal anxieties pass final judgment upon intricate and difficult problems of constitutional reform, economic organisations, monetary policy, foreign affairs, when experts, who pass their lives studying them, differ profoundly ” asked Sir Norman Angel recently in an article published by an American paper. “One casts a mental eye over the list of problems upon which the voter —the busy salesman, lawyer, doctor, overworked factory hand;, lorry driver, charlady or chorus girl—under our present system of democracy,, is supposed to have opinions: the rival merits of low tariff and high, international trade and economic nationalism, monetary policy, whether we should have a managed currency, or return to gold, and if so whether at the old ratio or a new and if a new, what ratio; or whether we should have a bimetallic standard; whether we should lower the tariff to enable foreigners to pay their debts or sacrifice the debts and raise the tariff; what our commitments in foreign policy should be; whether it is wise to increase the navy, retain big battleships or agree to scrap them; unemployment insurance . . . these are a few main subjects out of a list which, if complete, would include hundreds.

“What can the opinions of voters, able to Consider these questions. only “in their spare time” be worth? I pint that question bluntly, not as a preliminary to the disparagement of the democratic method, but in order that we may face realistically the problem of making that method workable. For we shall have to make it work if a

complex civilisation like ours is long to survive. You do not get over the j difficulty of wrong public decision by dictatorship, by devices like those now being tried in. Germany, or Italy, or Russia. For it is the paradox of dictatorship that the dictator can attain poAver only by a large measure of popular support for his policies. Public opinion finally decides even under dictators. (That dictators themselves recognise this truth is proved by the importance they all, even the most firmly 1 seated, attach to propaganda). . . The /educated ’ '(-make no better hand of ■government than the “uneducated." “ ■ ’indeed, they r often make a worse.

y “The hope for democracy lies prejeisoly in the fact that in solving the problems of society it is the great sineplicitics, rather than points of erudition, which are important. And that is true even (perhaps especially) in the presence of,. the differences of the exports. The doctors of economics, for instance, 1 differ on many points. If the layman (had been able to take over from the economic doctors a few simple truths concerning \yhich all competent economists are : in complete agreement, much of the economic.postilence which has cursed the .world this last fifteen years would never have occurred. It is this task of simplification, of de\ reloping the care of, or aptitude for, the correct interpretation of simple facts of universal, knowledge, to which education must irt the future address itself if democracy is to be saved.”

WHO SHOULD OWN A CAR?

The question “When is a man justified in owning a car?” may soon be as difficult to ans Aver as “When is a man drunk?” The problem Avas made a live one in Christchurch the other day when the opinion Avas given by Mr J. O 'Shea before the Transport Board that no person, unless for business reasons, should bo running a car if his salary wore less than £4OO a year. To many avlio havo bought cars for a song and tuned them up for use at week-ends, Mr O'Shea's idea will appeal as ludicrous (says the Christchurch Sun). Mr J. F. Cousins, for the Ncav Zealand Motor Trade Federation, in criticising Mr O'Shea’s statement, pointed out that cars were available for all purses, and the class of \ r eliicle and its use would bo determined by income. Mr Cousins said that 30 p'er cent of the cars in Ncav Zealand were owned in the farming industry, 33 per cent were

used for business purposes, and 37 per

cent were used privately. If it is Mr O’Shea’s object to dictate by taxation what pleasures of life' are to be on joyed by the people—and that is what ho is doing—he is opening up a field of interference with liberty rich in intriguing possibilities. A Menu Settlement Board might decide what income would entitle a person to eat this and that; a Sports Control Board could perhaps confino cricket to gentlemen with gold-mounted bats, football to young men whose parents are ratepayers, golf to those able to pay their tailors’ bills for plus fours, tennis to those who can show that they have a certain sum on deposit in a bank against any possibility of default in fees.

All that is just as speculative, and just as logical, as the implication that a man who receives only £2OO a year and who has a car bought cheaply, should not bo allowed to use that car cn a week-end day to take himself and family to some picnic ground. People use cars according to their moans; it is their own business just as much as is attending a race meeting. There is nc class distinction in motoring, which plays a very necessary part in the preservation of .health and the'-conduct of business in any modern community.