AN INTERESTING DISCLOSURE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16610, 6 December 1919, Page 6

AN INTERESTING DISCLOSURE.

HOW CONSERVATISM RUNS “REFORM.”

SIB WALTER BUCHANAN*

EMERGES!

(Published by arrangement.) The following interesting article appeared iu a recent issue of the Auckland Star. We hope that our readers will give it careful attention as it throws an instructive light upon the very intimate relations, always suspected, but persistently repudiated or denied, that exists between the “Reform” party and our Conservative landed aristocracy, of whom Sir Walter Buchanan is a leading member: — THE POWER BEHIND THU THRONE. It is to be hoped that the electors everywhere, . not only in this constituency, but throughout the Dominion, will,pay careful attention to the facts which Mr. Matheson (Independent Reform candidate for the Masterton seat) made public last Friday night. Addressing a political meeting at Masterton, Mr. Matheson explained at length how his attempt to stand for Parliament there had brought him into conflict with the Masseyite “Power behind the Throne,” and he proceeded to disclose the precise position in which the “Reform” party stands in regard to Sir Walter Buchanan. This gentleman evidently exercises practically sovereign authority over the party, so, far as the selection of its candidates is concerned, and when for any given reason a politician wishing to stand for Parliament in the “Reform” interest fails to come up to Sip Walter Buchanan’s test of fitness or cannot ‘ ‘pass muster’ ’ under his eagle eye, that candidate must either, withdraw or go to the poll with, the full knowledge that the party vote and the party organisation will be used to support some more acceptable mouthpiece of Conservatism. In this case, Mr. Matheson had announced his candidature some considerable time before the sitting member, Mr. Sykes,, came into the field; and he refused to accept Sir Walter Buchanan’s request—perhaps we should say “command” —to stand aside because, as he told his audience, he objects to dictation of that sort and also because he considers that there is far too much of the caucus and the “machine” about “Reform” politics, and on his own confession he wants something “cleaner and more democratic.” If Mr. Matheson is out for clean and democratic methods of government, we fail to see why he does not support Liberalism, which can supply him with both these requisites. But that, after all, is between Mr. Matheson and his own conscience, and what we are chiefly interested in just now is the part that Sir Walter Buchanan is evidently filling, not on the political stage, but behind the scenes, tor tne benefit of the Massoyites. Perhaps we had better remark here and now, that nothing we have to say is intended to reflect invidiously on the character or conduct of Sir Walter Buchanan. He is no doubt quite an estimable person, but his public record hardly suggests that he would be adopted by the. people of New Zealand, with their full knowledge and consent, as the controller of,their destinies. Sir Walter Buchanan is known by repute to most people in this country as a man of wealth, a big land-holder, and one of the strongest financial supporters of that Wellington “Reform” organ which has rendered itself notorious' for years past by its frantic abuse of the Liberal party and its leader, and to those who take any interest in our political history he is familiar as one of the most resolute and obstinate opponents of Liberalism and all its works, one of the few survivors of that clique of bigoted and reactionary Conservatives who so strenuously resisted the democratic policy of Ballance and Seddon and Ward a quarter of a century ago. To Sir Walter Buchanan and the men who shared his political creed in those days, Old Age Pensions, Land for Settlement, Democratic Suffrage, Democratic Administration, anything and everything that Lib. oralism imported into our national and political life, were alike revolutionary, outrageous and detestable. What SirWaiter himself thought and said about these matters is recorded at length in “Hansard”; and all that we need say about this side of the question now is that a man of Sir Walter’s age and temperament and political antecedents is tolerably certain to bo not less but more Conservative and reactionary today than he showed himself to ho a generation ago-. Now, this is the man to whom Mr. Massey and his friends have delegated the task of selecting their candidates; and what we wish particularly to stress for the benefit of our readers is this, that if Mr. Massey and his party win the victory in this present contest, it is to Sir AValter Buchanan and the small but influential group of Conservative landowners who look up to him as their guide and, leader that the fate and future of New Zealand are to be entrusted. For .it is manifest that if Sir Walter Buchanan is allowed to decide what candidate shall or shall not stand for “Reform” in a given constituency, he is literally dictating and prescribing the policy which the Masseyites are prepared to support. For we should not imagine that Sir AValter would select a “Reform” candidate who did not profess the “Reform” creed, and we would not accuse Mr. Massey of keeping one typo of “Reform” for the AVairarapa and another for the rest of the Dominion. Thus the triumph of Masseyism will mean the subordination of all our political and economic and industrial and social and national requirements and aspirations to the prejudices of a highly Conservative old gentlemen, whom the electors have refused to send to Parliament, and whose only claim to he accepted as the supreme arbiter of our destinies is that he is regarded by his own friends as “the political Godfather of Reform in the AVairarapa.” We do not think that these facts require much elaboration, in fact they seem to us almost to defy comment. But we must draw one obvious moral, by pointing to the marvellous discrepancy between the picture of “Reform” policy thus revealed to our gaze and the claims and assertions of the “Reformers.” Nothing seems to exasperate Mr. Massey or the average Masseyite more effectually than the suggestion that he and his party are dominated and controlled by the “Squatocracy,” the great land-holding interests that Mr. Massey has so long and loyally protected. Yet here is proof positive on the authority of a well-known member

of the “Reform” party that‘“Reform” policy is, as we have said, dictated by the/“Uncrowned King” of our. Conservative landed aristocracy. And this is the “democracy” that “Reform rn_a recent picturesque but pathetic advertisement implores the electors to love and cherish I The people of New Zealand will give their answer at the polls. , i .