POLITICAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 151, 2 December 1914, Page 5

POLITICAL.

• ixdisch>:kt utterances. V, rites the Eltiinm Argus editorially:— There was a piod deal oi sound com-: moil-sense iu the. Prime Minister's tllav.era speeea, ir.it there was also some Blatters that, for the sake of the general interests of the Dominion, had been much better left unsaid. Jn response to a harmless interjection with 110 specific appliifition, 'Mr. Massey i.U-uatureuly retorted, '-The farmers did the frightening this time last year, and would do it again if they had occasion to." Now, why on earth should Mr. Massey have made this uncalled-for reference to the strike episode of last year? Did lie intentionally strike a note intended to create discord? We thought lie was a broader-minded man. It is not right to thus endeavor to create class differenced. ' In holding out a threat of this nature lie was setting the farmer's man against the farmer. The farmer's man belongs to the laboring classes, and when Mr. Massey implies that he has the farmers ready at his beck and call to "frighten" Labor, then he is stirring up the fiercest passions of Labor, and creating ill-feeling where there should- be harmony. The Prime Minister may have imagined that he was pleasing and coin* plimeriting the farmers by thus boasting how he could fright|n Labor with them, but surely the farmers of New Zealand are not entirely at the beck and call of a political leader, to be .used as strikebreakers whenever required. Our opinion is that no farmer in New Zealand wishes to see a repetition of the strike episodes of last year. But if Mr. 'Massey is going to hold up the farmers of New Zealand as though they were a bludgeon with which he can at any moment he chooses knock Labor on the head, then he is golfcg to create the most deplorable state of j-.ii'airs imaginable. Our belief ia that tV farmers would wish to let tie dead lury the dead, and turn down the strike episode as a page that has been read, with a hope that it-may nr.i be opened again. We are sure that there is 110 intelligent farmer in the Dominion who would stand upon a public platform and say to Labor: "We frightened yo:i last year, and we will do it again.' Mr. Massey may have been angry when he gave utterance t'o his indiscreet remarks at Hawera, but there was no occasion for anger at the moment. We should say that his silly boast has cost his candidate every Labor vote in the Pa tea electorate.