The Press Wednesday, April 18, 1923. Mr Massey at Palmerston.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17741, 18 April 1923, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, April 18, 1923. Mr Massey at Palmerston.

Although both sides have been organising their forces for some time past in the Oamaru electorate, the election campaign did not. really begin until last evening, when Mr Massey delivered an address at Palmerston. The Prime Minister will find himself faced, as he was faced at Tanranga, with a miscellaneous discharge of threadbare and discredited criticisms. Indeed, tome or the Liberal Party's spokesmen have already declared that even if it nan do nothing else, the Party "'can tell the ''public once again" of "the broken " pledges of the Heform Party, of its '■' mismanagement of the railways, tho " finances, the soldier settlement," and all those other things which it told Xauranga, and which it "told the whole country last December without result. We do not expect that Oamaru will think these ancient fables any less uninteresting or unconvincing than they long ago became in the opinion of most people. Like the rest of the Dominion, Oamaru h more interested iu the present facts of politics than in the halt-insane ramblings of Liberal "die- " liurdisnt," which have now become matter rather for the student of political pathology than for the practical politician. Some of tho present facts were discussed by Mr Massey last night, and these will be noted by the public less because they refute the principal claim of the diehards (although the refutation is very complete) than because they are of great and cheering importance to tho community. The past year, Mr Massey says truly, is the most satisfactory the Dominion has ever had. Nat that the surplus in the Consolidated Fund is a record, or the credit balance in any of those accounts (the banking returns, the trade figures, and so on) which measure the financial and economic state of the Dominion; for these'are not records. But the surplus and those balances are good, and they como after a period of almost unexampled depression. What Mr Massey means is that the country has made a splendid recovery; and while lie attributes this to the efforts of tho people and the better economic weather, he is surely entitled to claim the credit for making good use of these beneficent forces. Having imputed to the Government the unpleasant conditions resulting from the slump, the Liberals are in honour bound to give Mr Massey the credit for the better position An which the country finds itself to-day. Mr-Massey's speech was no more than a first shot in the campaign, but there is much in it which will please the public. The surplus, ho announces, exceeds a million sterling. The public debt lias not been increased by a single pound—a most remarkable fact, quite without precedent. And as tho conditions of trade and business are now steadily improving, the Prime Minister announces that in tho current year taxation will be further reduced by two millions sterling. We cannot guess how the Opposition—the campaign on Mr Macpherson's behalf is a campaign, not for the Liberal candidate, but for the candidate of the Liberals and I'eds conjointly—will deal with these, to them, very painful facts; but we assume that they will rely upon their old-fashioned plan .>f declaring that tho present is ihe worst Government on earth. Hie country as a whole, however, will regard those facts as not only very encouraging, but also so many good reasons why the Government should be confirmed in office with a working majority.