The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1913. A REVEALING SPEECH.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1708, 27 March 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1913. A REVEALING SPEECH.

Durixq last week a speech was delivered, in Christclmvch by Mr. G,. W. Russell-, M. f'~ "iii to Mb. Massei' ! 3 recent address in that pity. It had'ho'tocQurred to us that thg .spfie.oh' l'equived ,any notice, ulr though we rather , fancied that its effect oil the Opposition press and Opposition opinion might turn out to be rather interesting. The effect was more interesting'than we expected. * Tho speech has obviously ppened the eyes of many sturdy friends of the-old "Liberal" party, to the great .advantage of the Government. .'These people, through their', failure to, think the reafities of the. political situation, had failed tp realise the realty hopeless f*nd beggarly ease" of their party. . There is a-story.'which relates how'a swords■pan; seelfing a post from the k Sultan, was to give "an. exhibition of his' skilj. ,1A slaye called iH) and the swordsman made a rapid sweep with his blade. The slave appeared to bo untouched; ancl tfto Sultan was about tp ; dismiss tiip applicant for ihe _ post. T(ie letter, ho.wever, jnvited the slave to sneeze, and the slave did sq, with the Result that his jiead, which h,ad' really been neatly completely savered, roiled off. Mr. llussell's' speech was the Opposition's'sneeze. .' 'Re spoke, anc] the fact that his party is dead.and done for became instantly jippavent. At any rate' that apparently is the bejief of j several,: Opposition newspapers. : If, in calling the member for Avon the Leader of the Opposition, we are insulting cither him or. the Opposition, we'can plead in ex-' tqnuation that his title to 'tno'leader-; ship, which he contested last session with Mn. Me. llasas, and Mr. Witty, has apparently been formally admitted by the chief organ pf the anti-Reformers, published -in. Phristchurch. It is true that even the Oimstchnrcli paper had ; t<> temper its lonely by suggesting that Mr. Russell was generally a careless man in handling facts .and figures, and by a sharp slap at him for his "lapse" in proclaiming that the' only .thing worth while is some §Qft of arrangement which will turn the Roform Government out of office. Every other Opposition paper we have looked up. b.een frankly dispsted with poor "Mh.- 1 Russell'sspeech, which consisted, apart from its' pathetic eulogiuin of Mr. Russell himself during his Bhort and funny Ministerial career, of a most entertaining denunciation of the Govern(nont as one which had not only committed the greatest atrocities, but which, being the Government, co.uld not, even if it wished to, ever do anything right at all. Tho Dunedin Star, which for very many years Was the'stoutest, And one of the ablest, of the old "Liberal" Government's supporters, niado short work of Mr., Russell and his rubbish.

The iS'frcr is far more severe than We should have thought of being, had we thought Mr. Russell's speech full-dress atontion. Mere " highly-coloured superficiality, " "filling enough to the easily satisfied," is its description of Ids spcech. Jle "offers, in place of a useful machine, a gaudy toy." Our Dunedin contemporary juxtaposes several of Russell's statements in order to show that he "contradicted himself so flatly and so often," that he really obviated the necessity for controverting him. Ho controverted

himself. If we had space, and if the speech were worth it, wc would gladly reprint the official Opposition organ's roport of it, but we can easily condense it into a few words: "Tho Government is bad; it has rujncd tho. country; it has worked evil every time it has stirred a finger. Therefore, we, tho Opposition, must unite with somebody, with anybody, so, as to get back into olhcc." Few people will wonder that this official reading of the Opposition' case appalled apd disgusted the majority ol the Opposition newspapers. Settled opinions, and long-fixed attitudes, cannot be altered all of a sudden; and we have never doubted that a great many people who honestly or mechanically supported the old "Liberal" party in the past have felt dubious ajwut the, new Government: So long as the Opposition leaders, and especially so lqng as the Loader of the Opposition himself, kept in tho background, this' distrustfulness v.'oiilcl wear off only fairly slowly The honest friends of the old Government had not been placed in the positipn of facing fairly and squarely the question: 'Wfiat does the Opposition stand foii Their newspaper advisers have been striving to .keep this question in the background by tho simple process of making dreadful and reckless noises, and stumbling into pitfall after pitfall, -only to porno out shouf,ing rnoro loudly ■than ever._ Jut now the Leader of tho Opposition has made a speech, and with a jerk the .Oppositionists are brought' faco to face with the fact. And tho fact is the extremely nasty one, that the Opposition policy, as expounded by its Leader, is not a policy at all, but only a frenzied hatred of the Government. Mr. Russell cannot be blamed for his failure to make bricks without straw. We do not blame him. Nor, wq farjey, will any of the Oppositionists, save those who share his rage and bitterness,. blame hiiji for revealing'the sorry case of his party. It is a welcome fact that the speech led the Opposition- Dunedin Star and other anti-Ministerial papers to express their disgiist. Their candid criticisms mark, we trust' and believe,- the'beginning pf their realisation that the New' Zealand Oppositiqn has'ijo policy, and of their realisation that, in the words of Mr. AsquiTH,' in: a recent ppeecb, a party "cannpt live by hysterics'jilqne."