DEEDS, NOT WORDS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 635, 13 September 1933, Page 4

DEEDS, NOT WORDS

Mr. Coates has been distinguishing himself on the eve of the Lyttelton by-election. Electors will possibly spare the passing tribute of a sigh for the misguided gentleman who was ignominiously led away by the police after calling the actingPrime Minister a liar, but they j will also hardly withhold a tri- j bute to the personal prowess of a Cabinet Minister who, with all the forces of law and order presumably at his back and an enthralled audience presumably hanging upon his lips, was still prepared to descend from Olympus and take an interjector forcibly by the coat collar. This should do much to dispel the illusion that our Cabinet Ministers are no longer men of action, but mere verbal jousters and warriors of the pen. One of the things which did so much to set the earlier political pioneers of this country in a place apart was the fact that they were men of their hands, and Mr. Coates has now retrieved the reputation of the younger politicians by joining this hard-fisted brigade. Prior to this display of manly indignation, Mr. Coates had delivered a speech before "a few political friends," in which he a little peevishly bewailed the fact that "it was too much to expect anything good to be said about the Government." This is surely an extreme view and one which is a little unjust to so many of the organs of opinion which have sought manfully on every occasion to say anything good about the Government that it was possible to say.

"With God's help and good health we will carve our way through these difficulties," was the very pious preamble with which Mr. Coates prefaced his remarks. Humility is an excellent thing ,even in politicians, but there may be some carping critics who will enquire how much of the responsibility for extricating the country from its difficulties is to be left to God . and how much to Mr. Coates. It is hardly in keeping with this invocation of Divine help to find Mr. Coates, a little later in his address, proclaiming emphatically that the Government has oeen given a mandate by the people and that its only concern is to carry it through to its con- I clusion. Mr. Coates concluded by 1 remarking that he believed that the people of New Zealand realised that the present Government was doing as well as any Government could do. Without expressing prejudice there appear to be one or two other Governments who have done a little better ; perhaps Mr. Coates would have stated the position more exactly had he said that the people of New Zealand realised that the present Government was doing as well as could be expected.