Liberals and Reds.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17631, 7 December 1922, Page 6

Liberals and Reds.

There is so little in tho electoral situation which the Liberals can think of without anxiety that it is difficult to grudge them their solitary crumb of comfort —the fact that in some of the North Island seats the Keform vote will be split. To anyone who has imagined that the zeal of the Liberals for Proportional Bepresentatiou is a product of sincere conviction concerning principles it will seem a little odd that they should rejoice ovor the prospect that in one or two of these seats they may win with a minority vote. But since their zeal for P.B. is the purest opportunism, we are not at all surprised at what they call their "grim" pleasure. And since they are thus purely opportunist, it is not surprising that they should imagine that Keformers are opportunist too, and will be converted to P.ll. by these splittings of the Beform vote. In this conjecture, of course, they are mistaken. The objeetionsoto P.B. remain. We refer to this matter for the light which it throws upon the Liberals' conception of the forces upon which they rely. When Reformers speak of vote-split-ting on their side, they mean the splitting of the Eeform vote by candidates supporting the?,: Beform Party. The solid vote is a solid Beform vote. But what do the Liberals mean when they complain of vote-splitting and upbraid Mr Massey for profiting by the splitting of votes? Do they mean that the Liberal vote is split? They do not, .because there has been no splitting of. the Liberal yote. The vote which the Liberals do not like to see split i 3 the Liberal-Bed vote. They regard the Liberal vote and the Bed vote as a homogeneous whole. They have long done so. When Mr P. C. Webb was elected as a very vivid Bed the official leaders of Liberalism celebrated his victory in Wellington. During the campaign the Christchurch organ of the Liberal Party declared that the Liberal Party and Bed Ped Party were in agreement on 90 per cont. of their policy. After the Patea by-election the same Liberal newspaper upbraided Mr Holland for his foolish tactics in not keeping solid the Liberal-Bed vote. At the election in 1914, Sir Joseph Ward adopted as his own nominees nearly all the official Bed candidates in those districts in which no Liberal had come forward. In face of all those facts, and their presont treatment of the Liberal-Bed vote as a beautiful homogeneity which should not be disrupted, how can any prudent opponent of the Beds support the Liberals, who, with the almost solitary exception of Mr Isitt, are willing to play the Beds' game. . This is the issue before the people to-day: Is the country to be managed by Beform or by tho Beds? There is no third alternative.