DUNEDIN CENTRAL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 32, 8 February 1915, Page 6

DUNEDIN CENTRAL

Seldom has a constituency been able to excite a more intense or a more prolonged anxiety than Dunedin Central has inflicted upon the country during the past two months. By a single vote it 3 verdict went in favour of the Labour Party at the original count on the day of the general election, but on tho recount the discovery of an official blunder restored the seat to the Ministerialist who had held it in the late Parliament. The result came as a very pleasant surprise on the eve of Christmas to the harassed Prime Minister, who had received a surprise of the opposite character in Hawkes Bay a few days before. Tho majority which had previously disappeared had now beeu restored, and Mr. Massey was able to enjoy his Christmas dinner undisturbed by the obligation to make immediate arrangements for summoning Parliament or tendering his resignation. But this comfort was of very brief duration, for, having won the seat through a technical error which had invalidated more of his opponent's votes than of his own, Mr. Statham developed conscientious scruples agaiitßt the retention of a prize which was the gift not of the electors' verdict but of a sheer accident. Very honourably, and oven chivalrously, Mr. Statham allowed these scruples to pievail, and the result waa the by-election which was held on Wednesday last. As though for the express purpose of prolonging an agony which had already I been extended to an unconscionable time, the Dunedin Central electors gave Mr. Statham at the original count a small majority, which might easily have been reversed by the votes of the absentees and the seamen, which had still to be counted. But, luckily for Mr. Statham, there were more of the former than of tho latter, and from the figures published on Saturday it was clear that he was assured of a majority of about a hundred. The result is one upon which the country is to be congratulated just as heartily as Mr. Statham himself. Neither a change of Government nor a dissolution would bo anything short of a calamity at the present time, and one or other of these calamities would have been a probable consequence of an Opposition victory in Dunedin Central. As in duty bound, our contemporaries in this city take diametrically opposite views of tho reeult. To the one the mere statement of Mr. Munro's " unseating" is "sufficient to brand tho transaction as the meanest in our politi.o»l history "4 to the other j%. Stutft&m'e

victory is a wholesome indication of a general revulsion of feeling in favour of the Government. To a critic unprejudiced by party bias the fact thai Mr. Statham's action was not mean, as alleged by the Opposition organ, but exceptionally generous, and was so regarded by the Dunedin Central electors, tends to deprive their verdict of the general significance which is attributed to it by the organ of the Government. If the roll used on Wednesday had been the same as that in force at the General Election, a change of fifty or sixty votes would have sufficed to give Mr. Statham his victory j and assuming tnat the recent additions to the roll had, as was generally believed, been strongly in his opponent's favour, the turn-over of a hundred or a hundred and fifty votes would still have beeu enough. If we deduct from this total the number that may naturally have been transferred as a mark of appreciation of Mr. Stalham's sportsmanlike refusal to retain the seat which waa lawfully hw, the balance of votes to bo credited to a general change of feeling would not be very large. In his speech on behalf of Mr. Munro one of the points most strenuously urged by Sir Joseph Ward was that a victory for the Opposition would not involve a dissolution. Possibly that argument was accepted and acted on by many electors who are fully in accord with the general view that a dissolution would bo a calamity. The result has fortunately saved the argument from the ordeal of a practical teat, and given the Government a. further breathing space. The time thus gained should be utilised by both parties not in nagging or intriguing, but in putting their heads together for the common good. Both Mr. Massey and Su- Joseph Ward should frankly recognise that, whatever the outcome of the various election petitions may be, the stable Government imperatively demanded by the interests of tho country and the Empire cannot be formed except through their loyal co-operation for that purpose.