POLITICAL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 276, 10 November 1911, Page 4

POLITICAL.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir.—Many of the statements made by Parliamentary candidates arc, to say the least, misleading. At Palmerston. on XVednesday night, Mr. McNab, in attempting to justify the Dreadnought iniquity, said that Mr Fisher, Federal Premier, had been turned out of office for refusing to give a Dreadnought. The facts of the case are that the Australian Labour Party, in their appeal to the country, made Andrew Fisher’s refusal to give a Dreadnought a plank in its platform, as against the Deakin-Cook Liberal Party which offered a Dreadnought, the result being that Fisher received an overwhelming majority in both the Hoit'e of Representatives and the Senate, and the givers of Dreadnoughts were, as a political party, practically wiped out. It is regrettable that mostly our politicians arc merely grabbers of roads and bridges’ grants. There isn’t an atom of constructive statesmanship among them. Three years ago a Napier candidate threatened to sleep on a Minister’s doorstep in His blankets (he probably meant in his pyjamas and top hat) till he got something for Napier. Last week in the Princess Theatre a candidate who in his first breath called Sir Joseph XVard. Bart., a dictator, and in his second sloppered all over the Government in fulsome adulations, said that when he looked round the hall he saw many parents whose children he had given a start in life to by helping them into Government billets. The moral, of course, was--elect him to Parliament if you want Government billets for your children. He proved what the Opposition allege - that getting into the Government service is a question of influence and not of merit. —I am, etc., GRAFT.