NATIONAL PARTY MEETING.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20283, 27 August 1937, Page 9

NATIONAL PARTY MEETING.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Hamilton electors will need something more tangible as an appeal t.o their intelligence than the lengthy and impassioned harangue, consisting entirely of destructive criticism, which is the best way of describing Mr O. C. Mazengarb’s speech the other evening. The meeting had its amusing features. For instance, there has been much talk from Mr Doidge and others about the Nationalists’ appeal to youth, how it is a young man’s party, and what spleudid chances there are in the political El Dorado for young men. I counted 22 leading supporters on Mr Mazengarb’s platform, and am prepared to stake my life that not one was under fifty.

Another intensely funny aspect to an observer was the obviously stagemanaged stunt by which a young man was urged to go the platform and make a show of opposition in order to Justify the speaker’s argument. Later he was seen shaking hands cordially with the speaker, an apparent convert In one night to Nationalist philosophy. Resort to such means to make an impression on the audience is clearly a sign of weakness.

Then there was the entertaining spectacle of a legal gentleman rising t.o propose a vote of thanks and confidence in the National Party’s "policy” when not a hint of policy had been dropped by the speaker throughout the evening. In fact, Mr Mazengarb was frank enough to admit that his party was too scared of Labour adopting the policy, if any, to announce it just yet. This feeble excuse for failure to enunciate a single constructive and practical idea was hard to line up with Mr Mazengarb’s passionate declaration that he trusted the people.

If the Nationalists really trusted the people they would have no fears of their brain-waves being copied by Labour; they would declare their policy here and now and trust the people. Mr Mazengarb’s forensic knowledge and debating ability were used to great advantage in frequent bursts of emotional rhetorio designed to sway the unthinking, but these tactics are likely to prove as futile in Influencing the common sense of the people as was the combined antinewspaper attack just prior to the last election campaign. New Zealand is in the vanguard of social and economic progress, and all the Mazengarbs in the world cannot turn back the clock. —I am, etc.,

NOT BLUFFED, Frankton, August 25.