ELECTION COMEDIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 86, 24 November 1911, Page 4

ELECTION COMEDIES.

Wellington “Post” deals lightly with electioneering comedies in the following terms:—“How bewildering it is to bo just a plain, ordinary member of the public! The right ear (or is it the left?) is tugged by the Government man, and the left ear (or is it the right?) is pulled by the Oppositionist. “Hear not ive, unthinking ere at Aires, voices of two different natures?” asked Wordsworth, with his thoughts far away from electioneering. The Press Association gave Mr. Massey’s Winton meeting a setting of cheers and loud applause. One had a glowing picture of Winton won over for one night at least by the Leader of tho Opposition. After enjoying the music of the band of the I.oth .Regiment at Oamaru as a counterblast to the Winton Town Baud’s strains for Mr. Massey, Sir Joseph Ward has described bis rival’s mooting as a “political trick” with the loud cheers and the loud applause by arrangement with Opposition stalwarts drafted into Winton from places far and near. By casting this doubt upon the genuineness of tho demonstration for Mr. Massey, Sir Joseph obviously invites the Opposition to retort in kind with charges about machine-made enthusiasm,; and between them all tho public may be disposed to be suspicious of cycrybody. “There’s no art to find tho mind’s construction in the face,” said Duncan, and the same difficulty applies to a political meeting. On the face of it,- who doubts the “expression of approval” for the candidate, but then comes the rival with a theory to invest everything in a dark cloud of suspicion. If a candidate has a meeting of 95 per cent, of favourable people, rather undemonstrative, and 5 per cent, of opponents, carefully distributed in accordance with a plot of superhuman subtlety, what will be the meeting’s complexion (1) at the time, and (2) next day, when explanations are offered by the aggrieved candidate? It seems that a cunning candidate does not give all his intelligence to running his own meetings. He believes it is very important to run “the other fellow’s” as well. It is a queer business from the electors’ viewpoint. Knowledge (M strategy seems to bo more valued by some candidates than knowledge cf politics.