WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 October 1918, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

(WELLINGTON CENTER " THE LABOR yiCTOSY, - Correspondent.)' Wellington, Oct. 4. It was obviouß long before tlie closing of the poll yesterday that the Wellington Central Labor candidate would score an easy victory in the content for the Wellington Central vacant seat. His organisation was admirable in every respect. His workers and his motor-ears were everywhere at exactly the right time and in the pre-arranged, order. His committee at the central booth could tell you as the day progressed how many Labor votes had been polled and with in a few tens how many Reform, how many Liberal, and how many Independent. Thirty minutes before the booths closed a member of the committee forecasted the exact order in which the candidates ultimately stood on the poll and allotted to each of the first three his number of votes within a hundred. This is typical of the precision with which the party carried out all its arrangements.

THE OTHER SIDE. Quite a different state of affairs on j the other side was discovered early in j the day, Mr. "Mack had numbers of J enthusiastic friends working for him, : some wisely and some unwisely, and probably ho polled most of the votes he | could have secured in the circumstances, j but his endorsement by the "two IVs," J as they came to be called —the Prohibitionists and tho Protestant Association —set strong forces to work against him, and, with this handicap; it is doubtful if he would have fared much better than he did eveo if'lie had not encountered the double fire of the of the' official Liberals and the official Laiborites. As for poor Mr. Hildreth, he has good reason to complain of his treatment by both-'the Liberals and the Reformers. They simply put him in the field and then left him to shift for himself.' THE NATIONAL CABINET. Mr. Hildreth is in. some measure to blame for his defeat, in that he went very much out of his way to announce from the platform that while enduring tho National Government during the course of the war, he was an out-and-out supporter of the Liberal Party. Ho might have left as much as that to be taken for granted. But his indiscretion gave loyal Liberals and loyal Reformers a wholly insufficient excuse for turning a deaf car to the appeals of Sir .Tames Allen and the Hon- W. D. S. MacfDonald for their in proclaiming to the world at large the determination of the Dominion to discharge to the full its pledge of the last man and the last shilling in the cause of righteousness and freedom- According to the Labor Party's precise figures, not more than a couple of hundred Reform voters went to the poll and scarcely 500 recognised Liberals.