THE MAN BEHIND THE LABOR GUN

NZ Truth, Issue 1043, 21 November 1925, Page 6

THE MAN BEHIND THE LABOR GUN

T^HE office brain of a political party 1 is not always a conquering force on the platform; and Walter Nash's running at Petone (1600 behind T. M. Wilford) does not show Nash at his best. If he is not as good an electioneer as the other Nash (J. A., who easily retained Palmerston North for Reform), he could beat the Reformer handsomely at economics or at any of the things that count m statesmanship. Walter Nash is the statistician of the Labor ■* Party; the manufacturer of its economic bullets; the author of its best ."thoughtful" stuff. He is its pamphleteer, and may one day be its historian. He is just the man to compound the sort of material that will show Labor forth as a party with a real mission m social-industrial affairs.

He is no mere controversial pretender. Labor now, as His Majesty's Opposition, has three years m : which A* get away from cheap Red clap-trlH and to give the countr^ something to think about; and Nash, m the Party's office, can mould thin g s in that way, arid be hardly less influential than if he was m Parliament. It is by solid buijding (not otherwise) that Labor will rise to office. When Labor has a newspaper controversy on, readers who don't want humbug always read what Nash has to say (which is not true of all Labor controversialists). So his defeat at Petone has not checked his usefulness. Pie will still be the man behind the gun. The sort of man that a Labor Party badly wants, as offset to its mere windbags.