THE ELECTIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1922, Page 6

THE ELECTIONS.

MINISTERS HARASSED. (From Our Wellington Correspondent.) Wellington, Nov. 24. Though the Reform organisers and agents, of whom there are a whole army in action at the present time, continue to express perfect confidence in the result of the polling a fortnight hence, the rank and file of the party do not appear to be so well satisfied with the position as they were a week or two ago. They do not admit the possibility of the Government being defeated—that, they say, is quite out of the question—but they confess their opponents are putting up a Setter fight than they expected. The news coming in from the provinces is not uniformly good from their point of view. The Hon. D. H. Guthrie, the Minister of Lands, is being fully extended by his youthful opponent in Oroua. and. Mr. Crabbe’s friends are very jubilant over the progress their protege is making. Sir Heaton Rhodes, the Minister of Defence. is being hardly pressed by the most successful of his former opponents, and the Hon. J. C. Coates, the Minister of Public Works, is being kept busy by an optimistic Liberal-Labor candidate who probably does not, realise the magnitude of the task he has undertaken. THE PRIME MINISTER’S PART. With three of his colleagues tied up in their own constituencies and with the rest, fairly fully occupied, Mr. Massey is driven to doing most of the party campaigning himself, and wonderfully well he is bearing the strain of travelling and speaking. His step is not quite so blithesome as it was twentv years ago, and his voice is ragged and worn: but he stands four-square to a heckling audience with all the good-humored determination of his spacious youth. His appeal to the electors is for a thumping majority that he may bid defiance to all the forces of the Opposi+ion. and lead the country out of the wilderness of indecision to the pleasant places assumed prosperity. Carrying about with him all the worries and responsibilities of office, and unsupported by a single big man among his colleagues, he remains the cheerful optimist of yore, observant, tactful, resourceful, and wholly unspoiled by success. Six years older than Mr. Seddon was when he nassed away, he has led a life scarcely less strenuous than that, of the great Liberal leader and he has missed being as great only by the absence of the touch that makes for genius. THE OPPOSITION. The Liberal-Labor Opposition is by no means disnosed to accept the hopeless position in the contest ass’<med it by the Prime ’Minister, and his good friend (Mr. H. E. Holland). Mr. Wilford’s excursions abroad, if the news? papers are to be trusted, have been attended by a considerable measure of success. Tn Auckland he made a distinctly favorable impression, and it is understood Mr. Massey’s second visit to the “Queen City” was due to this fact. Just now the Labor leader is in the South Island, from whence h* .reports that his receptions everywhere have been highly encouraging. The remnant of the Labor Opposition here, however, does not spptti to be doing quite so well. Mr. Holland’s resort to the “soft pedal” on the eve of the election • has betrayed the Labor leader as being only human after all. TTis resolves to die in the last ditch and to do other heroic things regardless pf consequences appears to have evaporated before the heat of his natural desire to retain his spat in the House. His lieutenant. Mr. Peter Fraser, on the other hand, is loudly proclaiming his devotion to militancy. and will go to the poll with all the emblems of revolt thick upon him. A PREDICTION. One of the best informed and most successful of the election “tipsters.” who claims never to have been surprised by the result of a single contest, seen ioday confessed himself to be puzzled bv the position. That Mr. Massey would win he had little doubt, and that he would win by a substantial majority was highlv probable, but, for the first time in his experience he could not diagnose the exact temper of the con'stitiiAncipß. A desire for “change.” merely for change’s sake, was making its wav in the country, and there was a feeling even among Mr. Massey’s friends that the Reform majority was too big for the good of the country, and too subservient. Many people, arguing along these lines, would cast votes for one section of the Opposition or another, not with any ardent desire to turn Mr. Massev out of office, but with a wish, only half defined, to see Parliament asserting itself. If these tendencies should continue to extend, the Reformers might have a “'close call.” hut it was more likely that they would not go the length of reaching the danger point.