The Timaru Herald TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1923. WHAT WILL MR WILFORD DO?

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18042, 6 February 1923, Page 6

The Timaru Herald TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1923. WHAT WILL MR WILFORD DO?

So Parliament will meet tomorrow; tlie champions will enter the lists, the party pennons will be flying, waiting for the signal from the Master of Ceremonies to begin the jousts. There will be the pomp and circumstance of previous Parliaments, but there is every indication that the Twentyfirst Parliament will be one of the most interesting that, has yet assembled in this country. The reason is because a Party Leader will have to decide between his country and his party. Mr Massey has not remained especially reticent over the post-election tangle. He has said frankly that he is able ,to carry on with a very small majority, a majority so small that it will hardly permit of his beingable to cany necessaiy legislation, unless some of the party prejudices are done away with. He is not afraid of the outcome of a vote of no-confidence, unless the silence of Mr Wilford has meant that there is to be a rapprochement between the ranks of the die-hards and the Beds; he knows Mr Wilford well enough to expect that the Leader of the Opposition will not command his small army to give support to Mr H. E. Holland and his theories. Yesteiday, the Liberal caucus was held, and the usual amount of silence follows it. Therefore, until Parliament meets, we are no further qn. When Mr Wilford spoke at Petone the other night, and hurled -some Garvin at the assembled multitude, he said: “We must wait and see what the others are doing.” That statement shows that Mr Wilford is a very worried man. He is a man in a very tight corner. He has the eyes of the country on him; he has the Labour leader looking at him appealingly, and beseeching him to sound the death-knell of “Toryism,” of “capitalistic oppression.” On the other hand, be has sound’ logicians telling him that there is no room for a third party in the political whirl of the Dominion; that there has grown up in the last few years a party international in its objects, one that aims forever at the pro letariat and the commune. And then he has Labour snarling in the same old way. He must be worried. What is he to do? The fact is that the country is taking a very great interest in the whole affair. It realises the position. It sees that Mr Wilford’s silence may mean one of two things; that he is endeavouring to place a case before it to show that Liberalism is necessary as a separate -party in Hew Zealand politics, or that hollas decided that a National Party would be in the better _ interest of the country. Leaving- Mr Massey out of it altogether, Mr Wilford, one is sure, realises that the consequences of the former decision would mean that ho has placed party before country. It is a hard accusation, but it is a true one.