PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1940, Page 2

PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT

CRITICISED BY OPPOSITION LEADERS A BELATED AWAKENING. NEED OF CONCENTRATING ON WAR. (By Telegraph—Press Association., WELLINGTON, This Day. “They seem to have found the policy for which we have been fighting for years in the face of heavy odds,” said the Leader of the National Party, Mr Hamilton, commenting yesterday on the People's Movement, which held a meeting in the Wellington Town Hall on Tuesday night. “Certainly the serious points they mention are fundamentally identical with those issued in our manifestos in the last five years. “It is like the awakening of a political Rip Van Winkle who suddenly finds that which everyone else has known for years. The same energy backing the fundamental principles they now espouse might have assisted those of us who have been for years in the fight they now so naively discover.

“But they are not entirely up to date. If is appropriate to mention that we are in the midst of a war —a life and death struggle. Questions of war organisation and war finance completely overshadow and antedate any interest there might be in this interesting phenomenon of the political 'awakening of some who are now hit hard enough to wake, and are awakened so abruptly that they lose their sense of proportion. “People are not in the mood for domestic politics or self-seeking other than as it affects the war effort —and very rightly so —if they really appreciate the gravity of the crisis with which Great Britain and her Allies are faced.”