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Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17612, 15 November 1922, Page 8

'To be heard, or to do anything, in the House at the present time," so Dr. Thacker told the audience which he addressed last night, "one almost had to be insulting, which was not as it should be." . "We are not surprised that Dr. Thacker should have decided that the electors were entitled to an explanation of bis methods in the House. ~ But the explanation is not satisfactory. Other members can get themselves heard, and get things done, without being insulting at all, and if we thought Dr. Thacker would be re-elected, we should advise him to study their methods. Most men, if they could only attract notice by behaving ill, would prefer to lemain unseen and unheard. ♦ The chief .difference between the speeches of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition is plain. The

former prefers to put forward a constructive policy, based on sound- and careful finance and proposals for the steady development of the country and the betterment of all who live in it, rather than to dwell on the undoubted skill and sagacity with which he has steered the Dominion through the depression following the war. His opponent, on the other hand, seeks to win the support of the electorate by conjuring up the names of the great men associated with Liberalism twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. The "Liberal" Party in New Zealand to-day is perpetually looking back over lte shoulder at something that another set of men did a generation ago when their policy was something more than a paio reflection of that of its opponents; Reform looks ahead into the future and plans for the welfare of the New Zealand that is to be. —»— ---_, Mr Wilford's speeches leave one in some doubt as to the precise goal at which he and the Lib-Labs are aiming in this election campaign. In one address he gives his hearers to understand that he is fighting for the Premiership and a Lib-Lib Ministry. There is not the least objection to his cherishing that ambition, even though it is a hopeless one—it is proverbially better to aim at a star than a street-lamp. But then one reads that in a brief Gpeech to some sixty supporters in the Borough Couuoil Chamber at Cambridge Mr Wilford "dwelt upon the importance of having a strong Opposition as a check to the Government." Perhaps, after all, it is safer to aim at being Leader of the Opposition than Prime Minister. The position is certainly more easily attained, is more easily filled, and imposes far less responsibility upon the holder. But it is rather a dull ambition and if\ the new slogan "Back to Opposition" puts heart into Mr Wilford's followers, they must be more easily satisfied and more susceptible to the mildest of inspiration than one suspected.

"Finance," according to Mr J. Morton, the official Liberal-Lnbour candidate for Eden, "is J Liberalism's strong suit." If) that is so, why does Liberalism not play itP "Why, like an incompetent player, does it persist in acting as though it held a YarboroughP If there iB one subject of general'concern on whicTi the Lib-Labs know less than another, it is finance. Their criticisms of the Government's~ finance—«nd! no matter how capable <a Government may be, that <ilways affordß a point of at* tack—is too feeble for words. If they really, in the face of the damning evidence to be found in "Hansard 1 ," think finance is their strong auit, wb.at can be said of the rest of their handP

Both, Mr Morton, and his leader are obsessed with the conviction that the farmer j especially the small farmer, is going to take it out of Mr Massey on election day in revenge for something he has, or has not, done. Mr Morton knows "for certain" that the farmers "are fed up with the Massey way of running affaire." ' They *had been, neglected—"those men whs"hod walked-? through miles of heavy country to record! their votes in favour of Reform at the last election." But the tide was turning, and the.farmers would have no more of Reform. It is, easy to, acr count for Mr Morton's excursion into fiction—he has been reading 'some of the earlier literature of the Auckland "Country Party"—the party with one candidate in the field. Mr Wilford's belief that, all round the.country small farmers were waking up to the fact that the Massey Party was not really the friend they had thought it to bo is, of course, either a. case of the wish being father to th.o thought, or of his mistaking the fervent remarks of a small farmer on hearing what his pigs fetched at the eale for the voice of tho farming community denouncing the Reform Party. The defection of the farmers from the ranks of Mr Mnasey's supporters is one of the numerous delusions cherished by the Lib-Labs as concrete facts. As an English King remarked 'to a too-aspiring son, "They will never out off my head to make you king."