The Star. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1913. OPPOSITION LEADERSHIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10871, 11 September 1913, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1913. OPPOSITION LEADERSHIP.

The determination of Sir Joseph Ward to accept the leadership of the Opposition Party has given such obvious pleasure to our friends, the Reformers, that it would ill-befit any other section of tho community to affect disagreement with what has taken place. Tho announcement will, we feel sure, be hailed with universal satisfaction. Through lack of efficient leadership on both sides Parliament has got sadly out of hand of late. The result has been much senseless recrimination and loss of valuable, time. Sir Joseph Ward will, we feel sure, at once enlist the loyal and well-disciplined support of the Opposition in the House, and he will be able to rely very largely on the reinforcement of his voting force on all crucial questions from the men who sit on ihe Labour benches. The bent of the new leader's mind is habitually constructive. He has demonstrated himself a splendid organiser and a helpful as well as a skilled critic. There is reason to hope that under his control Opposition energies will no longer run riot in profitless persiflage. Of course there are outside agencies to be contended against. A section of the Opposition Press is irritating and unscrupulous in its methods, the " Dominion " newspaper, the special mouthpiece of the great landowners, particularly so. That has just been demonstrated by the deliberate concoction by that journal of a cock-and-bull 6tory to the effect that some of the more prominent of tho Liberal vanguard were to be relegated to obscure places on the back benches. The obvious purpose of this canard was to throw the ranks of the Opposition into disorder. Its effect will probably be to rally the forces to their new commander.'Sir Joseph's weakness in the past has been to take these unscrupulous newspaper tacticians altogether too seriously, thus feeding their vanity ajid reinspiring their malevolence. He may rely upon it that the public, which in the main is fair and generous, will weigh these critics on the scales of justice and true judgment give according to the evidence.