One of the Best

When portly Sir Joseph George Ward resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded last week by Deputy Prime Minister George William Forbes, most citizens of the Dominion had a satisfied feeling that next to nothing had happened.

They were pleased because they are conservative, one of the most conservative and quietly prosperous people in the world. Sickness in Sir Joseph's case was both the excuse and the "real reason" for an expected and fully discounted resignation. A good New Zealander--one of the best-- he instituted several important reforms, among them the first penny postal service in the world. He was also New Zealand's first Health Minister.

The new Prime Minister has, in 22 years of parliamentary life, long since ventilated all his ideas, and all of them are what one would expect in a prosperous farmer, the class which provides most of New Zealand's politicians. As a speaker Mr. Forbes is extremely even-tempered, with a quiet, unflagging persistence which wears down opponents. "Parliament will be summoned at the usual time," said he last week, "and there is cause for confidence that means will be found to deal with our more pressing problems, especially unemployment." Unfortunately for U. S. manufacturers these "means" are likely to include still higher New Zealand protective tariffs.

Neither the New Prime Minister nor the people of New Zealand seem more than faintly interested in the blatant charges of misgovernment and police terror which shriek to heaven now and then from Western Samoa, onetime German colony, today a New Zealand mandate (TIME, Jan. 20). It is assumed that this discontent is caused by French and Chinese merchants who give the natives firewater for reasons peculiar to trade. In New Zealand the Samoan question is simply not an issue.

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