THE COMING ELECTIONS

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 10 April 1914, Page 4

THE COMING ELECTIONS

MR MASSEY and his men have made a round of visits, and Sir Joseph Ward and his men are making a round of visits. The old cries are in the air, one side declares that it has a large instalment of an announced policy to go through, and the other declines to produce a policy for fear of having the same appropriated by the enemy. The "ins" fail to explain how it is that all their charges of the past of extravagance, corruption and waste with " faked" surpluses have broken down, and the other side fails to explain how it is that its tremendous denunciations .of land monopoly did not manage to do much in the lessening of the same monopoly.

It ought not to refuse to produce a policy, if it has one, for fear of thieves. Its right ground is that Oppositions are like medical men, not expected to prescribe until they are called in. A new issue has arisen. It regards the strike of last year. It is easy to say, as the ''.Defiance Butter" man said the other day in Sydney, that the strike was stage-managed for the sake of effect. It is just as easy to say that the disturbance was too great for the ordinary police, and especially as the facts point that way. After the event it is easy to say also that the strike ought to have been settled in two days.

But we cannot divide the county at election on a matter of academic opinion. The two meetings held by Mr Fisher have been failures both, and the rudeness with which the Minister was refused freedom of speech has been adroitly turned to account by ascribing the facts to Red Fed. tactics. Which means that the Red Feds, are on one side and all New Zealand on the other.

That is the strength of the Government position, and all such interruptions of meetings strengthen the works more and more in proportion to the character of the interruption. After all, the strike suppression is a feather in the cap of the Government, and nothing can alter the fact.