CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 234, 4 October 1927, Page 6

CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.

A savage hag been defined as a man who laughs when he hurts you and howls when you hurt him. It would be unjust? and absurd to suggest that our Reform friends are savages, but may it not be said that in one respect the evolution of their political civilisation has been arrested? They complain that the splitting of votes cdst them the Raglan seat. Perhaps it did; on the other hand, perhaps it did not. There is no certainty that the official Reform candidate would in a straight-out contest have commanded all the votes polled by vthe other non-Labour candidates. The point we wish to make here, however, is that Reform is being wounded by the weapon it prepared for its opponents. Mr. Massey repealed the Second Ballot Act and promised to put something better in its place. The promise was not fulfilled. When vote-splitting operated in favour of Reform, and against Liberalism, as it did for a long while, Reform smiled, if it did not laugh. Indeed, Reform went so far as to split the non-Labour vote and allow Labour to win seats. Reform was warned that the time would come when it would suffer from the effects of this capricious system, but it paid no heed. Only the other day, as a correspondent points out in this issue, two Ministers who voted for thq principle of a private Bill amending the electoral law, were taken to task by a Reform newspaper.. Perhaps the result of Raglan will soften the Reform heart towards electoral reform. Adversity is an admirable teacher.