THE COLONIST. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1919. NORTH V. SOUTH.

Colonist, Volume LXII, Issue 15243, 3 December 1919, Page 4

THE COLONIST. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1919. NORTH V. SOUTH.

Much in the way of platform indiscretions must be overlooked in a candidate possessing the claims of Mr. Clutha Mackenzie to the goodwill and sympathy of all sections of the community. Liberal allowance must bo made also for his youth and obvious inexperience of politics. Ample applications of these palliatives, however, must leave even his arflent admirers at times at a loss to excuse his plattform flights. In Ms attempt to wrest Auckland East from the tried hands ,of the Hon. A. M. Myers, Mr. Mackenzie, the son of a formor Liberal Minister and Premier, and a son of the South Island by birth and upbringing, has swallowed the Auckland theory that the limits of civilisation are reached at vho borders of the province of Auckland, and that any Government expenditure beyond that favoured territory is sinful and- extravagant. Auckland audiences expect to bo told about the peculiar excellence of their own district and the primitive condition of all other parts of New Zealand, and Mr. Mackenzie, with a guile in strange contrast to his many fino qualities, has set himself to minister to this amiable weakness. If some of his remarks at | a recent meeting are an average sample |of his campaign methods he is telling his audiences just what Auckland audiences love to hear. In one speech that has attracted a good deal of attention, ho warned his hearers, to an accompaniment of apprehensive applause, that if the Liberals were returned to power there would be a recurrence of "their old policy of dragging weary lines of railway across barren deserts in the South Island," and that Auckland would bo "left to get along the best way she can with her awful clay roads, while those stupid railway lines are constructed all over the country in the South." Needless to say, Mr. Mackenzie's facts relating to Liberal policy in the past were as far astray aa his diverting picture of txie country traversed by South Island railways. The "Timaru Post' has N taken out some figures which Mr. Mackenzie would do well to study, that is, if he is still capable of being swayed by facts. They show that it is the Reform Government that persists in the policy of frittering the public works fund on innumerable small railway venr tures all over the country (mostly in the North Island) and will not even suggest a bettor plan. The Liberals, on the contrary, can point to a record of useful work in the national interest. In 1890, the last year of the Conservative regime, there were 684 miles of railway in the North Island and 1120 in the South. Under the Liberal Administrations the North gradually overhauled the South and finally passed it, and this in spite of the fact that supporters of the Liberals preponderated in the South. In 1906, the year in which Sir Joseph Ward became Preni !ier, there were on the Main Trunk lir^ 335 miles open for traffic, out of a 'total distance'of 426. miles. The lino h:.d then been ' under construction far over twenty years. • The Minister if Public Works stated in. October of that year that the vails between Auckland ar>d Wellington would be connected by tho end of 1903, and he was better than his word;. the first tram ran through in August, 1903. The Wa:d GJvernmoiit competed nearly a nmidred miles of the Main Trunk lmo is\ loss than two years, whereas the previous 335 miles had taken more than twenty years to build. The Liberals., as tho "Post" remarks, still adhere to the old ideal of a public works policy in the national interest, but the Reformers cling to the policy of waste and extravagance, a policy whose mam purpose, according to -their own state meats, is to catch votes.