THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2319, 28 November 1914, Page 6

THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Thb expectation generally Held of a bitterly contested election campaign does not seem likely to be realised Here and there a good deal of feeling has been shown by candidates and their supporters; and very, discreditable methods of misrepresentation have been resorted to in certain quarters, in an endeavour to injure Ministers, but if anything there is a cooling off rather than a. rise in the political temperature. Tho reason for this is a. little difficult to discern, but the probability is that the great bulk of the public are unmoved by the artificial attempts to generate heat and excitement because the Opposition bad already so grossly overdone the manufacture of bogus slanders and misdemeanours on the part of Ministers. The average citizen who has been regaled daily months past with wild denunciations of the perfidy of Ministers—denunciations which on investigation have so ofton prov-f ed to be what is commonly know as "mare's nests" —cannot be blamed if he now finds it a 'little diffcult to work up any interest in the repetition of oftexposed fictions. Nor can he bo blamed if he declines to take seriously the'suggestion that the Prime Minister has sought to benefit himself by the construction of a railway near a farm in which he has an interest when that railway was promised and the line surveyed long before Mr, Massey entered Parliament, at all. These sort of thingß are fall-' ing very flat, and unless the Opposition can manage to find something more interesting and important to talk about, the closing days of the struggle are liable to prove dull indeed. Probably the rank'and file of the party are not altogether to blame for the state of things depicted, for their leaders have given them nothing in the way of a constructive policy to proclaim to the world, and they are forced to fall back on generalities which are too transparently barren of practical ideas to either interest or deceive anyone. What none of the political parties appear to have been properly realised is that the public on this occasion are very little interested in all the petty details that go to make the usual election contest in normal times. What the electors really are concerned with is to secure a Government they can trust to carry on the affairs of the country sanely and with prudence during what may _ prove a critical time ahead. It.is because of this, that the prospects of the Wardist-Social Democrat makeshift combination are hopeless, and they will grow more so tho more people think about the situation.