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Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22992, 8 September 1944, Page 4

‘‘When the General Election conies, the Labour movement will have good reason to be grateful to Victor Gollancz and his barely anonymous pamphleteers who have given us ‘The Trial of Mussolini’ and now ‘Your M.P.’ Barely anonymous? Michael Foot was admittedly the author of the first: Tom Wintringham is undoubtedly the author of the second,” writes "Critic” in the New Statesman and Nation. “In these slim books there is ammunition to blast more than one Tory from the hustings. Major Patriot, 0.8. E., M.P., is an imaginary but average, essential and ordinary Tory. Losing his son in this war, he begins to reflect on the disastrous policies which sent not only his, but thousands of other fathers’ sons to an early death. But his personal tragedy and remorse are merely pegs for a remorseless and devastating picture of the incompetence and ostrichism of the party which has ruled us without a break for 13 years—and since the two Labour Governments were always in leading strings—really for 22 years. It is difficult to see how any young man in uniform who reads this book can vote for a conservative candidate. But it is no foregone conclusion that those who are angry with the Tories after reading ‘Gracchus’ will vote labour. That depends on the capacity of the Labour leaders to avoid the complacency of Mr Attlee who now suggests that the leftward swing in the country is due to the admiration of the work of the Labour Ministers. Instead of looking like the party that will unite all progressive forces, Labour gives the impression of being mainly anxious to maintain the domination of an established hierachy.”

With effervescent opinions, as with the not yet forgotten champagnes, the quickest way to let them get flat is to let them get exposed to the air.— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.