THOSE WHO WOULD GOVERN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 287, 5 December 1945, Page 4

THOSE WHO WOULD GOVERN

ERNEST BEVIN said nothing new when he reminded the Empire that the coming United Nations’ Conference will be the most momentous of the world. There is a fervent hope that it will build something really worthwhile out of the ruins of the old League of Nations, but there is a knowledge, too, that its task is tremendous. That is due partly to a realisation that the League of Nations failed when there was every reason why it should have succeeded. It is partly due, too, as Mr. Bevin has emphasised, to the disinclination of peoples to trust a form of government not set up by their own direct votes. But there is more to this problem of world government than that—it depends on the ability of not only the men sent to govern, but upon the ability of their own governments to govern their own people. If the British delegation sits down at the United Nations’ Conference and makes an eloquent plea for world peace while there is industrial unrest in Britain herself, with what degree of confidence will other delegations regard the British? To bring that argument nearer home, if the Right Honourable the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, is to attend and speaks and fights for minorities, what conviction.will his wards carry if the tramwaymen of Wellington are on strike, the miners or the wharf labourers are on strike in his own country? The same applies to Mr. Chifley, of Australia, to Mr. Forde, to Mr. Byrnes of the United States, to Stalin of Russia, or to Molotov. What right have these men to attempt to govern the world if, in the first instance, their own Governments cannot govern their own people? It would pay Mr. Chifley to settle the industrial unrest in Australia before he attempts to arrange a future for Java. Further than that, Australia, all sections of it, must help Mr. Chifley to settle that unrest, and so avoid sending him to the somewhat hypocritical task of telling other people how to govern when his own people will not be governed, or he is unable to govern them. The same argument applies with equal force to New Zealand. This country should not place Mr. Fraser in the position of taking our carpet sweeper into another nation, when our own house is so badly in need of sweeping.