THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 1930. THE BY-ELECTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19036, 3 April 1930, Page 6

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 1930. THE BY-ELECTION.

A CORRESPONDENT to-day, •4*- taking his cue no doubt from Mr D. G. Sullivan, M.P., refuses to regard the result of the city byelection as a vote of no-confidence in the present administration, and says that “if the other 30,000 electors had gone to the poll Mr Armstrong would have won by 9000 votes.” This is an opinion that is being sedulously spread by one or two Labour members, and its absurdity ought to be unmasked. A year ago, at the Mayoral election, which was a record poll for the whole of New Zealand, not 50,000 but 30,000 votes were polled, and Mr Archer, the Labour nominee, who received what was by no means a purely party vote, just managed to win in a straight-out contest by 235 votes. At the election of councillors the first preferences were cast in the following order:— Citizens’ Association 15,924 Labour 13,243 Dr Thacker 1,606 This result showed clearly enough that a majority of the citizens were opposed to the Labour ticket, but the difference was so trifling as to give a special significance to the voting in the recent by-election. There, the nominee of the Citizens’ Association polled a tremendous majority, and it is fair to assume that if another 10,000 electors had gone to the poll (another 30,000 is a truly ridiculous suggestion) the proportions would not have varied greatly. On the contrary, the Labour Party is so strongly organised in Christchurch that Mr Armstrong’s vote of 8690 ought to give the party organisers food for very serious reflection. A TREASURE ISLAND. CAPTAIN MALCOLM CAMPBELL will furnish another Treasure Island story yet, of pirate gold on Cocos Island. It is a wonder that these palm fringed coral reefs of green lagoons in the Indian Ocean have not stirred more adventurers to add to the accumulated wealth of modern romance. The search for the pirates’ chest will be carried out in a fitting setting. Captain Campbell’s modern appliances need not necessarily detract from the glamour of it all. A tropic night, a few bungalows in the palm trees, a lonely wireless outpost that was once part of a tale of war, the masts of the wreck of the Emden still visible out of an oily sea, and an occasional liner passing but never touching—this is colour enough for the story. Moreover, it is announced that the captain has “ certain definite information.” There is an air of mystery in this, and the islands are large enough—there are more of them than is popularly imagined—to justify an exciting search, and maybe the unearthing of a few marooned sailors. THE MAYOR’S MODESTY. THE MAYOR will never err on the side of modesty. He has broken out in a new place to-day, or ought we to say he has broken out again in the same old place with a slightly different metaphor. He regards the return of Mr Jones to the City Council as very astonishing, but it is just another little cross that he and his Labour colleagues have to bear. “ Those of us in the Labour movement are not in it for personal considerations,” he says, and he goes on to liken himself to the slavery abolitionists, who on many occasions “ seemed to come within an ace of success and then found that the forces of stagnation and reaction had been able to put back the clock for quite indefinite periods.” And gathering assurance from this pretty picture of himself as a kind of second Abraham Lincoln, he goes on to say that essentially the economic fight is “ between Mammon and men, and we are on the side of men, including of course women and children ” (although Mrs Fraer and Mrs Jones and a few other people are ungracious enough not to admit it). Mr Archer’s outburst, like his condemnation the other night of “ the failure, trickery, and robbery of private contractors ” is just a continuation of the tirade of twelve months ago when he was talking of God and Mammon, and assuring the citizens that in his opinion no Christian could stand out of the Labour movement. It would be merely comic from the soap-box, but it is distinctly tragic from the =. city.