OUTLOOK FOR REFORM.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1443, 18 May 1912, Page 5

OUTLOOK FOR REFORM.

PARTY GAINING STRENGTH DAILY.

MR. MASSEY INTERVIEWED. (Prom Our' Special Correspondent.) Auckland, May 17. "The Reform party is gaining strength every day of tlio week,' said Mr. W. F. Massey, Leader of the Opposition, in a conversation witli your representative this morning. "Reports . l'rom all' districts throughout tlio Dominion show that popular opinion in favour of (lie Reform party is growing at quite an astonishing rate, and consequently the party is able to estimate tho Hon. T. Mackenzie's claims to have secured the support of the country at their true worth. All tho electioneering tactics of the members of tho present Cabinet aro proving futjle, and they . may as well savo their breath. The Eoform. party knows how those tactics aro regarded in the country, and it would cheeri'uly faro an olection to-morrow, confident of ;i sweeping victory. The men who havo usurped the position of Ministors, and ivho have neither faced Cabinet nor tho country aro assisting tho Reform party in every speech. "Tho answer to their groat Taranaki campaign was tho announcement of Mr. Wilkinson, orio of the strongest men in Taranaki, as a candidate for tho Eginont scat, against Mr. Mackenzie, at tho first opportunity, and when that opportunity, comes Eguiont will return Mr. Wilkinson." . Mr. Massey went oh to say that tlio result of the Ministry's desperate appeals in the South Island had been that the Farmers' Defonco organisation in Canterbury had joined forces with tho Reform League to protect themselves from a Ministry .with whose personnel they were well acquainted, and at whose political methods they had become alarmed. The Canterbury Women's Social and Political League had also decided to support the Reform party. _ "Never in my experience, added tho Reform leader, "has thero been such a wave of feeling against tho Government as ithore is at present. Never has thero bben such keen interest taken in the Reform party; never so many good men offering themselves as candidates; and never so much goodwill expressed towards the Reform party by all sections of the community as at present. Notwithstanding the fact that Ministers think it necessary to continue abusing and misrepresenting mo personally, I think those tactics on the part of the Ministry are good signs, and I hope they will persevere." "What will happen when tho session opens," Mr. Massey was asked. "The future is in tho lap of the gods," he replied, "but I believe that every movo of the present Ministors brings me nearer the goal at whioh I have been aiming for years, and that is to got all tho sane, sensible, and really progressive men on one side of the House, and to place all the faddists, fanatics, and opportunists od the other."