THE COMING ELECTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15721, 23 September 1914, Page 6

THE COMING ELECTIONS.

The Government has taken the only course a self-respecting Government could take in deciding that the elections be held in December next. If the elections are to be postponed on account of the war it follows that the postponement should be till the end of the war. It is manifest that such a course would find no favour with the electors. Any Government suggesting such a postponement would lay itself open to a charge of clinging to office, to which the distractions of the war would be quite an inadequate answer. Even Sir Joseph Ward, in his anxiety to defer the appeal to the ballot-box, limits his approval of postponement to three months. At present we have no more reason to believe that the war will be over in March than that it will be over in December. A postponement till March would at best be a mere gamble, and a gamble for party advantage only, for the country has nothing to lose by facing an election in time of war. The only influence the war is likely to have on the elections is to eliminate frivolous aide issues and to make the selection of representatives the serious business which it ought to be at all times. Since New Zealand politicians commenced discussing postponement an election has been held throughout Australia. This did not prevent the Commonwealth from taking a patriotic part in the war; nor, as events have shown, did it give the party in office any advantage over their opponents at the polls.