"FINANCIAL WIZARDRY."

Free Lance, Volume XV, Issue 789, 13 August 1915, Page 6

"FINANCIAL WIZARDRY."

A False Note from a Party Fiddle.

TTTTC National Ministry has been greeted from one end of the country to the other with a chorus of approval. Only in one journal was there a false note struck. This was _in last Saturday's "Dominion,'' in which there was a nasty little sneer at the "financial wizardry" of Sir Joseph Ward, who was advised to follow "in the footsteps of his predecessor in office and make soundness the keynote of his policy." It is a thousand pities that the "Dominion" cannot penceive that, this is no time for party sneers and jibes. Sir Joseph Ward's reputation as a financier, and a sound and' successful financier at that, was made long before the Dominion came into existence, and it will never suffer from anything that Tq;an may say in an attempt to'discredit his abilities.

In any case, seeing that Mr. Massey has accepted the "-wizard of finance" as his colleague, it' may be. logically argued that the Prime Minister himself has full faith in Sir Joseph's "soundness." And is not Mr. Massey always', according to the Solon of Plimmer's Steps, the best iudp-.e of financial matters—and for that matter everything else —that the country has ever known. This is no time for resurrecting old and mean party jibes, and even in the "Dominion" office this outstanding fact might well be recognised.