ELECTION INCIDENTS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 59, 20 February 1911, Page 7

ELECTION INCIDENTS.

i Newspapers to hand by this week’s mail show that .on the whole the British people took the elections very quietly, so quietly, in fact, that a writer in the Daily Mail expressed his uneasiness at siuch calmness, ana suggested that it might be a sign of slackening of the national fibre. There were, however, one or two ugly incidents, Mr ChiurchiU’s descent on Lincoln to assist the Liberal candidate caused a furious outbreak of feeling. The Home Secretary tried for two hours to address an open air meeting, and every time he began to speak he was howled down, and had to leave for London without addressing the electors. The Unionist candidate went in danger of ibis life. Mud and tomatoes flew about merrily. A tomato narrowly missed Mr Churchill's fftee, <in.d, in keppjjn’g with the consistent bad. ItV'tv of tho profess ton, hit a pressman. ‘‘Keep yov.tr places,” shouted the Minister, “someone will be killed.’ If someone had been , it would doubtless have been the unfortunate reporter. Mr Churchill, escorted by fought his way across the Street to where the Conservative candidate was standing with folded arms, and offered to M him speak from the same balcony as himself, but the candidate, annoyed at the Minister’s intrusion/ looked the other way and said nothing. A batter spirit was infused into the Dundee contest. Mr Churchill was to have addressed 5000 of his adherents in the Drill Hall, but the meeting resolved itself into a friendly duel between the two candidates, each speaking in spells of five and ten minutes. Mr Churchill himself asked for fair play for his opponent, amid got it, and when the meeting was over shook hands with him. One of the best sayings of the election is to the credit of Mr L. S. Amery whose candidature for Bow and Bromley gave rise to the pun, “Amery Christmas.” Mr Amery was in Canada, lying disabled by a broken leg, when the election took place, but he cabled stating that though his lieg was broken, he was better than his opponent, who had not a leg to stand on. However, legs or no legs, his opponent won.