REFLEX OF THE TIMES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1933, Page 12

REFLEX OF THE TIMES

(By: Telegraph.—Press Association.)

■■-. ! CHRISTCHUECH, This' Day- .-; After, congratulating. Mrs. McCombs the Christchurch "Press" says:—"If tho by-election is to profit the Government at - all' the facts which it brings into view must. not be overlooked, and one of them is that Mrs. McCombs found supporters bocauso' the Government has lost friends. Their votes were cast against the Government rather than for Mrs. McCombs or for the Labour Party, and though it may be easier to wiu back disappointed deserters than to convert old foes the first problem is the drift and how to stop it. Everyone knows, of course, that Governments always suffer a political reaction in distressed . times. They are punished indiscriminately for virtues and vices. The Coalition, indeed, is less popular than it was almost entirely because it has done well. To do well it has had to be severe, and its severity has been misunderstood. What the Lyttelton by-election signifies to the Government, therefore, is not by any means that.it should reject or enfeeble its own policy, but that it should take much greater care to enlighten, the whole electorate. It is not chough to become assiduous in teaching and appealing when public opinion is' about to v be tested. It is truer to say: that it took the Coalition nearly two years to lose yesterday's election",than that Mrs. McCoinbs won it in threo weeks."