WHY NOT PULL TOGETHER?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19434, 21 October 1925, Page 11

WHY NOT PULL TOGETHER?

(To the Editor). Sir, —-“Moderation is the silken thread of virtue.” Is if not possible to approach the coming election for our representatives in Parliament in a spirit of moderation and common sense instead of being carried away by various sectional interests which appear to take control on these occasions. After all we are a loyal people—loyal to our own country and loyal to our Empire. The war demonstrated the spirit within us beyond any question. That war, however unavoidable it was, left us an aftermath of debt and responsibility which cannot be remedied by vain regrets, and therefore our duty, and the duty of every individual who professes

to be a loyal citizen, is to consider ( calmly and reasonably what can best be done to ensure our prosperity, maintain industrial tranquility, and thereby assist nature and time to remove the evil effects of the war. As in ordinary business, so it is with the Dominion, the financial position is the one feature which dominates every other. A few months of a slump and slackness of employment would cause untold hardship, and is it not better to look ahead and thereby give effect to the old' saying that '‘‘prevention is better than cure”? The “Mercantile Gazette,” a business man’s paper, with no political bias, has again and again reviewed the financial aspect and pointed out the necessity for caution and foresight. Our public debt has isen in 13 years from £72 per head to over £2OO per head; our last loan was practically a failure; onr products are essentially four —meat, wool, butter and cheese. Wool already promises a fall of millions, and though the others are doing well there is no margin at all, as year after year millions have to be borrowed to keep things going; our imports are exceeding our exports year after year — a sure sign of sliding backwards; the Homeland is having a difficulty in providing for our calls upon her for money and more money year after year. Under such circumstances what does prudence suggest? Simply that wc should have the best and the strongest Government that we can possibly obtain. Labour, very unfortunately, prefers to be a non-co-operative, independent unit, placing the aims of its party beyond every other consideration, and yet there is no man more closely concerned with the ensurancc of prosperity than the labourer who depends upon" his weekly wage. The great majority of working men realise this; they and their wives and families know full well by the sadness of experience what lack of employment means, and every right-thinking man knows also what injures them injures the whole. In time of prosperity we all share the advantages,*but with adversity in the way of depression it is the poorer people who are the principal sufferers. The man who looks ahead and thereby avoids an accident rarely receives any credit for it, but the man who meets with an accident not only suffers himself but brings trouble on many others. If the leaders of Labour will not look ahead and co-operate to ensure prosperity for the country and its people, can the men who generally support them be blamed if at an election such as that now pending they east their votes for those men who are best fitted by experience, standing, and reputation to do the best for the wellbeing of the community as a whole. May I suggest then that each man or woman shall consider carefully the responsibility of the vote and then cas* it conscientiously free from any party or sectional prejudice.—l am, etc., UNITY.