THE HUNTLY PRESS PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT 1 P.M. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1914. Notes and Comments.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 3, 30 October 1914, Page 2

THE HUNTLY PRESS PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT 1 P.M. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1914. Notes and Comments.

Though the elections are within rpjjp measurable disElections tance, political excitement is normal, and, except among the committees elected in the interests of certain candidates, there is as yet little or no enthusiasm. Even the all-absorbing license question causes no fkbtter save among extremists, the war, and, locally, the late mine disaster, absorbing.the whole attention of “ the many. ” In Raglan a somewhat languid interest is being taken in the general election, the presence of three candidates in the field, Messrs. Bollard, Furniss, and Thompson, only causing electors to wonder which of the two last named will proceed to the poll. There is a possibility of a fourth Richmond entering the lists; for, if the prohibition parly is not satisfied with any one of those already announced, they intend to “ put up ” a man who will stand for “no beer,” all other business pertaining to the welfare of the country being of secondary importance to the imposition of that sumptuary law which, to use a Hibarnicism, is to give legislative sanction to the liquid which men and women are not to drink. From the election to the THE electoral roll is Electoral nofc , a far cry > Roll. and . , I . t IS ~a s: tonislung that despite the efforts of the policeman and postman, names that should appear on the electoral roll never do so. In the good old times when the vote was worth financial consideration, voters to a man turned up to claim thenlegal privileges and the currency value which they often connoted—and in those days there was no roll. In our civilised times, when we scorn, such malpractice, and cling to our ideas of democratic principles like a limpet to a rock, and when we assert that it is “we” who make the laws we are bound to observe, it is strange that so much machinery must be set in motion, and so much extra work given to others who already have quite enough to do, in order that the “ free and enlightened ” may be enabled to exercise their privileges at the polling booth and do their duty as citizens, if the vote is worth having it is certainly worth a little bit of trouble, and if a man or a woman does not care to see that Ins or her name appears on the electoral roll, then to such should the vote be denied, the individual voter being made responsible for his or her own enfranchisement. The more that is done for us, the less\ve expect to do for ourselves, and spoon-feeding, if continued from infancy to adolescence, injures the moral fibre, and strikes a blow at that self-help the inculcation of which is so desirable.