CHRISTCHURCH NORTH ELECTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10233, 16 August 1911, Page 4

CHRISTCHURCH NORTH ELECTION.

THE POLL TO-MORROW

FURTHER REMARKS FROM CANDIDATES. The two candidates to represent the Christcliurcli "North electorate, Messrs L. M. Isitt and J. D. Hall, ivorp bus.v again yesterday and addressed meetings in tho, evening.

MR ISITT IN ST AIATTHEAY'S SCHOOL. REPLY TO CRITICISMS. Mv Isitt Had a crowded audience in Bt Matthew's Schoolroom. Oaledor.ian Road, numbers of people boiii;; unable to obtain seats and others being unable to get into the hall. Mr A. Jrl. Hobbs presided. „ n , i Mr Isitt, who was loudly applauded. dealt with newspaper criticisms. Ihe chairman of.the meeting, he said, had stated that the speaker's record was sufficiently respectable to entitle him to a fair hearing. A Chnstchurch newspaper did not think so, apparently. It stated that his stock-in-trade, was boldness, and the clear inference was that that was the result ot lgnor.V ance and baseness. The fact of the v matter was the newspaper had to wnte to order, and. if ivir Hall had been in his place and he in Air Hall s it would hare attacked Mr Hall as it was attacking him. He had been attacked on the question of military service. On that point ho had to say that •within three years the system of compulsory training would be very considerably modified. AYithm twelve months there would be a seething mass of .discontent from one end of the country to the other in regard to military training. (A A oice : " There is seething discontent now. ') As lie had told his first audience, lie was not .» a non-resistant. As a sane man he recognised that the country was suirounded by warlike and semi-civilised nations.. H<? found a modern writer declaring that within seven days sail of the Australian colonies there were 70,000 Chinese, every man drilled with a, click- and a precision that wou-d delight a German drill sergeant. He recognised that it would be a mad thing not to provide territorial means of meeting a contingency in that direction, and not to have some system ot military defence. But he was not compelled to swallow at one gulp that hastily adopted, that ill-considered., that undigested system of training which the Government had forced upon the people. The whole difficulty was due to the shameful way in which the Volunteer system was handled .(A Voice: "That's right.'J Isotlnng whatever had been done to encourage the Volunteers. Men were willing to give their time to the defence ot tho ■ countrv, but the Government said that they could pay for their own ammunition, and when they went to Sumnei and New Brighton for the Purposes of training, shooting or drilling to pav their own tram fares. the Government jumped from one ev- . treme to the other. A\hy had not, the United Kingdom adopted the compul- ■ sorTS-aton,? f, b[ ,2 upon this dominion bS ' O V? s tb ls°-J,J t , Country had sanctioned it? The light of every man to his own ie- • ligious views must he recognised It was a cruel thing and. a monstrous - thing that the system m operation should be forced upon the people with- / out any provision for the man \\ ho possessed an honest conviction that the 1 eligon of the Lord forbade the beanng of arms. He could not see any real difficulty in the way of the Government maintaining an efficient svstem or defence without those wretched compulsory clauses. He refused to believe that, if proper encouragement had been given, a large proportion of the people of Zealand "would h<iv© made any difficulty in playing their part in the system of national defence. He stood by his previous utterances, that if an effort was made to repeal or modify those compulsory clauses., while maintaining an efficient system, the men who went in that direction would find him behind them. AVhen New Zealand sent her troops to the South African war, what term of training did ■ they undergo? Some underwent six weeks,- others two months, and others three months. New Zealand was im- ' mensely proud of the fact that her troopers in South Africa were recognised as the smartest and most efficient men in the war. They did not require a long period of training to bring them . to that standard, yet the present system of Territorial defence involved no less than thirteen years of training. . His newspaper critic had said that although he "was opposed to compulsory training, he was not opposed to compulsory prohibition. But the cases were not parallel. In one case it was 6aid: "You will not do something," and in the other case: " You must do something." In the first case, there was no interference with any man's religious convictions. In the second place, it was proposed to compel men to violate those convictions. In the case of prohibition it was simply that a person had no right to sell liquor, because it injured not only the man who patronised the bar, but also men who never went near the bar. That was far from being 011 a parallel with the statement that there should not be interference with religious convictions

that would not allow a man to bear arms. There was, in fatt, 110 parallel at all. The contest with Air Hall had been conducted without bitterness. He did not think that in the course of the contest there would be one wry word between Air Hall and the speaker. He believed that when it was over they would be iust as good friends as at the beginning. He had a great deal of respect for Air Hall. Tt was a goodthing to have amongst the people a man who stood for clean morals and for those things that preserved the sanctity and the purity of the home. Tie considered that he was fortunate, as far as personal character was concerned, in having such an "antagonist. But in their political views they were as opposite as the poles. Air Hall looked in one direction : the speaker looked in another. Mr Hall's s3 - mpathies were with the privileged few; the speaker's were Yvith the many-headed whom Mr Hall hated. Power had already passed into the. hands of the people, and the country's hopes were with tho people. Existing conditions represented only one rung of the ladder of progress. It was necessary to push forward to further reforms and liberal measures. There was absolutely no similarity, in short, between the political positions of Air Hall and the speaker. Tho genus Conservative was not extinct. Air Massey was the leader of them, and Air Hall had come forward to support them.

In reply to questions, Mr Tsitt said • that he would support the Right to Work Bill, as it would get rid of the loafer. In a system of military training, every man who helped to pay the expense helped to hear the burden. He was not in favour of giving the women the old age pension at the age of fifty years. In reply to a suggestive question, he said that it- evidently referred to the Mokau case. Tf he went to Wellington lie would learn more about that case than lie knew at present. Ho had yet to learn that the Government acted more than unwisely, that it acted dishonestly. In any case, what were the Conservatives " kicking up a row " about, as if they had their way they would hand over ito the speculator all the Maori land they could acquire, and the freehold with it. As a matter of fact, had not Mr Mnssey suggested that the freehold of even some endowments and sections should ho parted with ? He was asked if, in case of a noconfidence motion on the no-license question, he would vote for or against the Government. He replied that it was a '"catch" question. What chance was there of the Government making that point the subject of a nocon fidence motion in view of the widely-increasing sentiment in favour of prohibition of the liquor traffic? They might as well ask him whether he would vote for or against the Government on a no-confidence motion in regard to emigrating to the moon. There was no possibility of the thing taking place. T'hey need not believe it. He could assure them that the uo-license party was impressing upon politicians the fact that it had the people behind it. A motion was carried, by a large majority, thanking the candidate, expressing confidence in him, and pledging the meeting to support his candidature. Fifteen "hands were held up against the motion. Yesterday afternoon Mr Isitt addressed about seventy ladies in one of the smaller rooms at St Matthew's School, and was well received. MR J. D. HALL'S CANDIDATURE. ADDRESS AT FITZGERALD STREET SCHOOLROOM. Mr J. D. Hall addressed a we]latended meeting of electors at the Fitzgerald Street Schoolroom last evening. Mr A. G. Morgan occupied the chair, and said that it was unnecessary that he should refer to Mr Hall's past or his antecedents. That had been pretty well hashed up—(laughter), or, at least, threshed out already. Still, there was no doubt that the country owed a great deal to those pioneers who first faced the wilderness and began the settlement of this country. Wha.t the country needed in Parliament at the present juncture was not so much men of oratorical ability as men of common-sen so. (Applause.) Mr Ha]], by wav of introduction, made reference to the rejection of the Town Planning Bill, and said that this seemed to indicate that the House had renllv no confidence in the measures brought down by the Ministers at present in Wellington. It was recognised that the Government should not be allowed to interfere in purely local nffnirs. and the history of past happenings showed that such interferences were r.lwavs disastrous.

The speaker proceeded to make .a brief commentary on the various members of the Cabinet. Mr Buddo, lie said, had discovered one point on which the Government was absolutely linn-the preservation of Paradise duel'::?. (Laughter.) The Hon T. Mackenzie said that he was quite prepared to take the position of High ■Commissioner in London, but on the occasion of his last visit to Christehurch he was unable to find time to confer with certain gentlemen on an important matter in his own Department. that of Agriculture.

Mr Hall went on to quote the allegations made by Mr Hine, in support, of his contention that the Government was corrupt. He said that the scandals revealed by Mr TTine «':->•? only discovered when the members concerned had lost t'neir scats. It would be a good tiling to unseat a few nioro of the Government members, when some more startling revelations might be made. Recently the Sumner Borough Council had asked the Government/ for a grant of money. The application was disregarded. but a little later groat publicity was given to the, fact that the member for the district had championed Sumner'a claims, and that a grant had been made. That was a most improper procedure. Before dealing wiih general politics, he desired to deal with certain statements made by his opponent. Mr Lsi'tt, the previous evening. Mr Jsitt had accused the speaker of holding a secret meeting, and said he had acted very wrongly and improperly, and ought to be ashamed of himself. (Cries ot "hear, hear,'' and ''quite right.') What the speaker had doue. he would do again. What lie had done was this: Tie was asked to go to a certain schoolroom to have a talk to some people there. He had complied with the request without advertising the fact that lie had done so. He was quite prepare.) in go anywhere and have a talk" to anybody, no matter who it was. (Applause.) As a matter of fact, there was very little else he proposed to deal with in Mr isitt's speech, because there was practically nothing in it.

There was one matter, however, which required a reply. Mr tsit.tr said that il the sneaker was returned lig would vote for" the repeal of the progressive measures introdwsd by the present (Jovernment. That was quite untrue. He intended to da nothing of the kind. Hp would vote for the repeal of no progressive measures. but he would certainly vote for the repeal of that section of the Public Revenues Act which ?mt>owered the Government, after a >;rant was allocated for expenditure in uie district, to divert it to any other lisiricl it liked. That was an .ahso- , utely wrong and improper provision, ind it ought to he repealed. The speaker dealt with the land question, the borrowing policy of the Go'orir.nent, the. relations of capital, aiiour and the consumer, local government reform, and the matter of comnilsory military training, on the same iues as in his previous speeches. In reply to questions. Mr Hall said le ivas not in favour of a referendum m the question of compulsory military training ; he had not lost sight of the jue-stion of rent in asserting that £IOOO at compound interest would in•rease in value, faster than £IOOO worth il' land, as the interest woma certainly >e more than the rent; he quite admitecl that the sum of £2,258,300 set forth )n his .poster as interest on the public lebt, was the interest payable. If the unount made by the reproductive portion of the debt was deducted, the renainder would be very much less. He vas not in favour of State aid to Catholic schools; he was not in favour )f Home Rule: he was in favour of granting the old age pension to women it the ago of sixty; lie was in favour of i scientific scheme of afforestation beau; undertaken by the Government, ind would like to have a provision for ree-plantins; inserted in every lease.

A resolution that a vote of thanks and confidence should be accorded to Air Hall was moved by Mr AVallace. Mr Lightfoot moved as an amendment, that a vote of thanks only should bo accorded. The amendment was lost, and the resolution was carried'by a good majority.