FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1496, 19 July 1912, Page 4

FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE.

STATEMENT BY-MINISTERS/ Tho entertainment at which membett of tho New Zealand Dental Association o.spcmbled last evening was not a pblitical gathering, but onoo or twice a. polibcal note was struck. The, Hon. Jas, Allen, in the course of a speech , , rtmoa'ked that one result which would accrue if th« Government romained in office even for two or three years vcould be the reiaovdl of false impressions which had been 'nstilled into tho minds of the- people by those'who were not the friends of .the present Goveriimont. If thero was onething that he wanted to livo for, as a politician, it was to have aspersions anl misrepresentations with which the present Government had been assailed proved by direct experience to be absolutely untrue. Pains had beon taken to make tho people of this country—particularly those belonging to the labouring class— tslieve that the members of tlae partj now in power were not their friends. II the Government remained in office fot only twelve months, Mr. Allen declared, tho people would find that its members were moro truly their friends than (some wjioso professions in tho past had been loudest. The Hon. B. H. Rhodes sounded a similar not<>. like Mr. Allen, he <said, he desired that they should remain in ■office, if only for a year, to ffliftw that 'they were riot in sympathy with Hi a squatter, but with the mass of the people. If he met his aAidit&rs again in a .war's time, ho hoped to have proved that sympathy.