EDITORIAL OPINIONS

Evening Post, Issue 50, 27 August 1935, Page 10

EDITORIAL OPINIONS

THE CHIEF DANGER

SPLITTING OF VOTES

(By Telegraph.) (Special to the "Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

.In an editorial today the "New Zealand Herald," discussing the Democrat Party, says: "Mr. Hislop's handicap is that he enters the national sphere with no practical experience to guide him on the larger questions awaiting answer there. That limitation reveals itseli! in his statement of the party's aims and policy. He does not seem to realise the difficulties confronting him, and probably because he has yet to come.to grips with the task he talks of the need of standing together. Every good citizen will agree that in the present time of economic war, as in the Great War, in which Mr. Hislop fought and bled, there is no room for party schism, yet the practical effect of the Democrats' entry will be to cut right across the largest and best political elements in the country, with the sharp | edge of faction weakening their whole i front. The Labour Party awaits and welcomes ,the opportunity of stepping into the breath, and is mostly likely to profit by the irruption of the Democrats. Why is Mr. Hislop willing to risk such a result? The head and front of the Democrats' attack is supposed to be on the Socialistic and bureaucratic tendencies of- which they I accuse the ' present Government, yet I when their' stated policy is examined jit is found that seven at least of the j planks of the platform would involve Socialistic and bureaucratic measures. The" electors may well ask, if this is what' the' Democrats have to offer, why they are being invited to desert thenold affiliations, and by their division run the risk of Having the Labour Party succeed' to' office;"