SIR JOSEPH WARD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 159, 30 July 1909, Page 4

SIR JOSEPH WARD.

A SATIRE, A correspondent' of the Stratford Post pokes .mi at Sir Joseph Ward ana his Dreadnought. In the course of a long !e :• he says:--"But the champion bluil' t. .lie lot was the one built by £ir «Jost',;i» Ward himself and worked off on the editors of the Maoriland Press. After giving a Dreadnougnt practically upon his own initiative, he then tfcmjed ais attention to ijhe powers which sway public opinion, and per medium of the confidence trick he fooled the collective editors of the Dominion into .supporting an action that would have been regarded as unconstitutional had it been done by a despot, let alone by the Prime Minister of an enlightened democracy. . . . The Opposition, which seems to possess the lighting capabilities of a regiment of wet hens, never murmured, and probably the only man in the llouse who saw through the trick was T. E. Taylor. Neither Mr. Fisher, the ex-Federal Prime Minister, nor any of the State Premiers received j unything out of the ordinary, and there ' is a suspicion as dark as the bottom i of a coal-hole that the secret and weighty information received by Sir Joseph was mostly myth. The secret none have been able to discover, and as regards the weight, it must have been so heavy that the Imperial authorities deemed it advisable to scud it out per cargo boat—probably tliey doubted the ability of the cable tu stand the strain; anyway, it does not seem to have come by the ordinary; channels of communication, and the editors who wrote that Sir Joseph Ward knew more than we did spoke a doublebarrelled truth, for the man who can give away two millions of the State's money, prorogue Parliament, take a trip Home, bring the business of the country to a standstill, fire Mr. Hogg out of the Ministry, and lassoo all the editors in the country, certainly knows more than most men."