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Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 511, 29 September 1915, Page 6

If anyone had suggested 12 months ago that the war would bring about such a revolutionary state of affairs as Sir Joseph Ward administering a severe but just rebuke in the House to the member for Lyttelton, he would have had his sanity questioned. But so it was yesterday (luring the debate on the new taxation proposals. Sir Joseph, replying as Minister of Finance, to the captious criticisms of Ihe Labour members, sharply reproved them, and Mr McCombs in particular, for pandering to prejudices outside the House. It will be agreed by most reasonable people that the Minister staled the case fairly. So far as the member for Lyttelton is concerned, he is possessed of a few set ideas of an extreme character which he drags in

on any old occasion, quite regardless as to whether or not they are for the time being relevant. Mr McGombs has a very considerable energy, which, unfortunately, is spent in misdirected efforts. He is a querulous critic, unhelpful and pessimistic, as Sir Joseph Ward suggested. If the member for Lyttelton would only profit by his mistakes he would soon attain to a much more exalted altitude, for his mistakes are many, and many times repeated. He, with others, needs to begin his political lesson all over again. He must rid himself of the idea that harsh administrators are ever on the lookout to load the shoulders of the less leisured class for pecuniary gain, and from political motives. Of course, if he could be brought to view this relation of the economic parties in a reasonable light, any Labour member would have to jettison his most cherished fetish and acquire fresh ideals, and perhaps so much -can' not be hoped for. But in such days as these Mr McCombs and his political colleagues might at least abstain from inflicting'their extreme and disruptive theories on a Parliament which is doing its best to fight New Zealand's part of the war manfully, and at the same time endeavouring to ease the economic strain to those least able to bear it. A judicious mixture of commonsense, tolerance, and patriotism is all that is required frorq these irreconcilables.