A CHALLENGE TO THE PRIME MINISTER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16566, 2 June 1914, Page 6

A CHALLENGE TO THE PRIME MINISTER.

In the multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, but in the multitude of speakers there often is contusion. During the last three or four months the party politicians have been rushing about the country, asserting, criticising and contradicting, one saying this and the other saying that, till the sadly perplexed electors well may wonder where the truth really lies. Their case is made all the more trying by the fact that the majority of the speakers scorn less bent on showing that they arc right than they are on showing that their opponents are wrong. The Reformers talk more of the failures of the Liberals than they do of their own achievements, and the Liberals more of the misdeeds of the Reformers than of their own virtues. Mr G. W. Russell may not have been entirely free from this affectation of modesty at Milton last night, but ho certainly raised the tone of the party controversy a little above the monotonous level of mere recrimination. He at least stated tho case for the Opposition in plain enough terms to enable the Prime Minister to state the caso for tho Government in similar terms and

if Mr Massey would devote himself on Friday night to replying to tho member for Avon he could scarcely fail to bo both interesting and instructive. Mr Russell broko no new ground, but he went over tho old ground with a precision that challenged

tho serious examination of his critics. He reviewed the story of the empty Treasury, for instance, giving the figures from the official documents and if he was wrong his error can be easily exposed, not by recalling how' much Mr Seddon borrowed in 1905 or how much Sir Joseph Ward 6pent in 1911, but by reciting the actual facts bearing on this particular question. In the past when Mr Massey and Mr Allen havo talked at large about the empty Treasury, they have befogged the issue with a mass of details concerning “ liabilities'’ and “commitments'’ which has made it quite impossible for the average layman to even guess at tho truth. Mr Russell has now suggested that the Ministers themselves were misled by a memorandum furnished to them by the Secretary of the Treasury which they did not understand. The explanation appears quite feasible in view of the fact that tho Prime Minister and his colleague could make neither head nor tail of the Post Offico Savings Bank returns and it is at any rate charitable to assurrie they did not grasp tho meaning of the figures they misquoted. The bugbear they set up in connection with the renewal of loans was demolished long ago, but Mr Russell was quite justified in directing attention to the fact that the

“difficulties” they were making such a fuss about last year never had any real existence. The renewal of loans, as the member for Avon put it, is “a commonplace affair of State business ’ and if Sir Joseph Ward during his term of office had called out every time one debenture was substituted for another of the same amount tho whole country might have been worked up into a condition of panic. But there were more important matters than this in last night’s speech demanding Mr Massey’s attention. There were allusions to the increasing expenditure, the dwindling surpluses, the declining land settlement and the rising rates of interest all requiring some answer from Mr Massey, and we trust they will not be allowed to pass unnoticed on Friday night. Tho fact that Mr Russell se6ured a vote of confidence for the Opposition from an open meeting in the

very heart of Mr Allen’s electorate may he of much or of little significance,. but it does not suggest that the enthusiasm for Reform which the Prime Minister has discovered all over the country is particularly pronounced among his colleague’s constituents.