The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1922. PARLIAMENT.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1279, 10 August 1922, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1922. PARLIAMENT.

“RATIONALIST.” the author of the contributed article which we published on Saturday last, is by no means alone in deploring the standard of parliamentary 'life in these later days; 'in fact, he is one only of quite a number who contend that the leaders of the people are not of the same calibre as the 'men who guided public opinion years ago. 'ln some respects the 'criticism and the comparison may be justified. In the early days there were giants in the political land, men of trained mind, broad vision, and undoubted ability. Hansard shows that the level of their debates was of the highest, and the legislation they enacted contained much that was enduring. One by one those big men passed from the stage, and it cannot be seriously argued to-day that the House is the eqaul, intellectually, of the Parliament of the past. Some truly great minds were devoted to the service of the State, and if their successors have not come up to their stature then what is the underlying cause? It has been said that a country gets the Parliament it deserves, and possibly one of the contributing causes to the diminishing influence of the legislature in the affairs of New Zealand has been the wave of prosperity that carried us along for so many years. To acquire became the standard of success, not to serve, and\as a result the most powerful intellects have been devoted to business and to production. The pioneers were inspired by a great vision, the creation of a mighty state in a new ,land. Many of them strove to that end without regard for personal affairs, and died very poor men. Perhaps the vision has faded, for there is a sad lack of inspiring thought in our national life to-day; it is all stale, flat, and unprofitable. A shrewd observer has said that, comparatively speaking, New Zealand has not had to struggle. Canada has to fight the elements, Australia the menabe of drought, South Africa the coloured menace and racial problems. What do we have to fight? And, because of the lack of struggle, the thinker contends, we have failed to produce leaders in any sphere. He points to .Scotland, where life is hard, and claims that it produces more leaders, more men of genius, than any other nation. In comparison, life in New Zealand, he says, is easy, and the consequence is a lack of driving 'force, incentive, and real leaders. Has New (Zealand had a nat-ive-born Prime Minister yet? Visitors well qualified to speak, such as the late Viscount Bryce, have stated very plainly that the ability of our parliamentarians is mediocre, and the queston is why? Have we been too much influenced by party fetishes and catchcries? It was a firm belief of the 'late Mr T. E. Taylor that the day would come when character and not party colour would be the only qualification for public life. These are serious mattears, the more so now because, for the first time in years, the country faces serious problems. There is need for clear thinking on the part of each citizen, so that we may have a House of Representatves, Chosen from the best, to guide the ship of State in the trying days that are ahead.

THE TELEPHONE. 7 DESPITE the fact that we are apt to grumble at the slightest delay or when everything goes wrong with the local

telephone service, we imagine that there are few persons in Upper Waikato who would like to be suddenly deprived of this nowadays indispensable machine, nor are there many who pause to look 'back to the time where there were no telephones. Yet that period is by no means remote. The mail who is middle-aged in this year of grace was an infant when the invention was first patented which wias to introduce the new era of communication. At an advanced age the inventor himself has passed away, and a general tribute to .his memory in the United .States and Canada took the form of the suspension of the telephone service for one minute at the hour of his funeral. The name of Alexander Graham .Bell is destined to live so long as the telephone is remembered. It was he who laid the train out of which have arisen the enormous ramifications of the telephone systems of the world to-day. A native of Edinburgh, he made America the home of his adoption, and there his scientific training and devotion to the subject of speech and speech-mechanism led him along lines of research the outcome of which was the evolution of the talking instrument which we all use now so casually and deem so indispensable. Doubtless Dr Bell had in 1876 a vision of what, his invention was going to mean in the lives of his ■fellow-men, but there is no evidence that anybody else realised in the beginning the great developments which were to follow. Although after his success a large number of. experimenters entered the field, few could claim to be putting forward any new principle, and the apparatus which he produced forty-six years ago constitutes, with improvements and modifications, 'the modern commercial telephone. Doubtless people managed to conduct their affairs and enjoy life well enough prior to the invention of the telephone. But if the world were suddenly to he deprived of 'the telephone to-day it would surely be hopelessly disorganised. Mastery of the art of reproducing sounds at a distance from their source has made us all in no small degree the slave of the telephone. Such are the milestones in the path of scientific progress. And Dr Bell lived just long enough to be granted a glimpse of the dawn of the era of radio-telephony, now being ushereoPin with a fanfare of trumpets that }s not likely very much to disturb a world which is prepared almost for anything.