Evening Post. MONDAY, JULY 10, 1922. TEN YEARS IN OFFICE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 8, 10 July 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, JULY 10, 1922. TEN YEARS IN OFFICE

It is ten years to-day since the defeat of Sir Thomas Mackenzie's stop-gap Ministry brought the twenty-one successive years of the Liberal regime to an end, and let a Keform Government into-power. It was a strange experience for both parties and for the country. For tho greater part of those twenty-one years Mr. Massey's party had had. no name but " Oppoßitipn " ; their attitude and outlook were those of an Opposition without the hope that usually inspires an Opposition of being able to make a change before long. The position had become so stereotyped that even-after the change which had seemed impossible had been effected, both the foes and the friends of the new Government Party occasionally referred to it as the Opposition. It was Mr. Seddon's death on the lOth June, 1906, that first opened the door of hope to the party which had already spent fifteen years in Opposition. But even after the loss of the man who for thirteen years had dominated the Liberal Party and the country with something very like absolute power, the party was not in any hurry to break up, nor the country to put it out of power. Six more years were to pass before Mr. Massey's chance came. The length of this period is enough to show that, it was not merely to the loss of Mr. Seddon's powerful personality that the decline of his party was due.

The stream of Liberal enterprise in legislation had begun to fail before Mr. Seddon's death, and the inevitable process was merely continued under Sir Joseph Ward. The 'growing independence of the Labour Party, whose alliance had been essential to the success of the Ballance-Seddon policy, the emergence of an issue of the land question — freehold ■ versus leasehold —which divided the Liberals and gave a united Opposition a very strong support in the rural electorates, and the emergence in Mr. Massey of the personality for which the Opposition had long been looking, were the causes which completed the undoing of the Liberal Party at the General Election of 1911. When Mr. Massey's turn at last came he was universally felt to have personally deserved it. He had faced the frowns of fortune so long and so patiently that no fair-minded opponent could grudge him a share of her smiles. In the days when the Opposition was a dejected, demoralised, and leaderless minority, whose chief function seemed to be to serve as a butt and a foil for the restless and audacious energy of Mr. Seddon, Mr. Massey, as Chief Whip, supplied the chief personal factor which kept the shattered elements of a great party together. In due course he graduated to the leadership of the party, he found it a name, and he even enabled it to catch the public ear from the-platform in a manner of which the other side had long enjoyed a monopoly. If ever a politician 'had fairly earned a good turn from fortune, it was surely Mr. Massey when, after eighteen years in the wilderness, he was privileged to enter the promised land on the loth July, 1912.

It was, as we have paid, a strange experience for 'all concerned when all the precedents of twenty-one years wern suddenly broken, and a new Govprnmnat was formed, in which neither the Joatlm* nor any of his colleaEiins had ever, hold office before, But it j?as

a strong team, which Mr. Massey took with him to the. Government benches; it was wisely and firmly led; and it was aided during its initial stages by the grave dissensions of its opponents. Mr. Massey's first Government was thus able to make a good start and to get well set before Sir Joseph Ward resumed the leadership of the Liberals and once more made them a fighting force. The new Government was able to put a number of good measures on the Statute-book, and to redeem at least as large a proportion of its election pledgeß as any Government, '■ whether new or old, is usually able to do. The land, the Legislative Council, and the Public Service were the most important of the subjects dealt with, and, as regards the first of these, there is no prospect of any reaction. * The Liberals seem likely to treat the Reform land policy with the same respect which the Reform Party has extended to the labour legislation of the Liberals.

Hardly had the Massey Government completed its second year when the Great War came along. It is hard to realise that, despite the unifying effect of that appalling calamity, the politicians at first took the then fashionable motto of " business as usual " for their guide, and that within a. month after our Main Expeditionary Force had left for the front the country was in the throes of a General Election, fought on the normal party lines. The deadlock that was threatened by the close balancing of parties made the following months the blackest period of our war politics. But the formation of the National Cabinet on the 12th August, 1915, enabled "Mr. Massey, with the loyal co-opera-tion of Sir Joseph Ward, to lead a united country throughout the war. Partly through the courage and good management with which he faced the difficult position forced upon him by Sir Joseph Ward's dissolution of the National Cabinet in August, 1919, and partly through the chances of an unscientific electoral system, Mr. Massey emerged in triumph from the General Election a,t the end of that year. Throughout the Parliamentary term which is now drawing to a close his Government has never been in danger, and the weakness of the Opposition has again become as valuable an asset for him as when he first took office. The country is grateful to the Prime Minister for all that he has done for it in peace and in war, in prosperity and in depression, during the past ten years, and heartily congratulates him upon the success which he has richly earned.