POLITICAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 50, 13 October 1911, Page 6

POLITICAL.

NOTES BY THE WAY. The “Patea Press,” reporting a performance in its town, says tnat the lady magician of the company when asked who would win the Patoa seat gave it as her prognostication tnat Air O’Dsa would. Tfio Auckland “Herald’s” view of Dr. Findlay’s candidature is put thusly ;—“A politician who has never been elected to Parliament, but has taken part in the Government for years, comes to a constituency with which he Ims not the remotest personal connection, and claims its support because lie purposes to set right a series of bad policies for winch tnc Government ho belongs to is mainly responsible.” The Prime Minister has tabled the proposed classification list of the CivilService under the Public Service Classification Act, 1908, and stated in reply to Air Merries that it was alreadyprinted. Tne “Waimate Witness” publishes a private letter from Dunedin, whitten by a press man, who thus discourses on the Hon. Thos. Mackenzie : “1 see you have Tom Mackenzie up your way. Weli, he is a citizen. If he only gets his foot into your place the whole of the physical anatomy of this forcible Scotchman will go in. You can’t help it. He is a groat personality is Tom, and lie lias without doubt done splendid work for the small beggars among the cockatoo population. I have reported him on a score of platforms, and lie has gripped me as being sincere and thorough—though as you kiiQw, like most journalists, I’m a cynic and an unbeliever. But, when 1 think of it and rub up my small bit of history, it strikes me, it lias always struck me, that ho is the kind of man who has made that little speck of country the great force it is in the world. As you know, 1 had never had anything worth tuppence to manage—rfew of ns journalists have —but if 1 had 1 should certainly invite this hustling, powerful Scot to turn it into something for me. You remember some years ago that article I wrote in which I predicted that lie would ho Prime Aliuister of this country and for which I was derided by some of the people who always knowmore than anybody else? Well, I can see my prediction in sight now-. He will carry your place, and after that his special fitness for the management of the affairs of this country—which are peculiarly and specially agricultural—will place him at the top of things here. The philosophical Radical, who lives in the clouds, as you and I once did, we still have a fine old revenence for, but to this Mackenzie Scot up your way who looks after the man and iris wife and the aids and grips something about the dinner to-morrow, 1 surrender everything to him.”