"HUMBUGGING AND WRIGGLING'

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 83, 28 November 1931, Page 6

"HUMBUGGING AND WRIGGLING'

J. E

. McMILLAN

(To the Editor.) Sir, — A little paragraph that has been going the rounds crept into the "Post" issue of 26th inst., wherein the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates eharacterises the Country Party Policy as being a document of "high sounding platitudes meaning nothing, humbugging and wriggling." I have a slight suspicion that party-politics is colouring Mr. Coates' ostensible opinion. His party has adopted a measure of derating, for example, which has for many years been a plank in the C.P. platform, as printed and published, and this along v/ith .other things are being gradually filched by other parties, who are the real guilty parties when it comes to humbugging and wriggling; Likewise, several of the Coalition candidates (though alas not in Rotorua) are now advocating total or at least a good measure of free trade with Great Britain, another wellknown plank from the Country Party's, "platitudes." Most of these converts are of the Reform persuasion, and I am afraid Mr. Coates will have to wriggle over a bit more towards the C.P. policy if he would hold ! his own party intact in the coming reshuffle after the elections. Mr. Coates and the metropolitan newspapers lose no opportunity of casti- " :

gating the Country Party, and giving I garbled versions of its policy, but I neither he nor they have yet dared I to read out from the platform or 1 publish the C.P. platform in full. | A decade ago the Imperial Currency plank was written in the C.P. "document," and that question is now agitating financiers and economists over the whole empire. Its solution, along with the achievement of "freer" trade all round, including (gradually) absolute free trade in necessities with . Great Britain, are absolutely indis- I pensable to the welfare of New Zealand and the Emipre. There is no man in Rotorua town nor the whole of the eleetorate, who can say that there has been any humbug or wriggling by our candidate, Mr. D. R. F. Campbell, in expounding our policy or answering questions. "Fiat justitia, ruat coelum" — Let justice he [though the heavens should fall.

Matamata, 27/11/31.