REFORM AND LIBERALISM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19436, 23 October 1925, Page 6

REFORM AND LIBERALISM

Mr. Coull, the Reform candidate for Wanganui, remarked on Wednesday night that Mr. Massey picked up the Liberal policy when Sir Joseph Ward dropped it. How gleefully the local organ of the National Party fastened on these words. “Reform stole (or ‘picked up’) the Liberal policy,” it declares, “has traded on it for thirteen years, and now accuses the right owners of it of ‘borrowing’ their policy.” The pronouns and the numbers are hard to follow in this statement, but we gather that it is a frank admission that the former Liberal leader deliberately dropped the policy. After he had cast it away to pick it up was not theft. Reform saw that the country needed a truly Liberal policy, and Reform gave it one. But that apparently is not Reform’s worst offence. “Why,” we are asked, “did Reform have to choose an ex-Liberal for Prime Minister?” It chose Mr. Coates because he had exceptional qualifications for the office, as the country js finding out. But why is Mr. Coates an ex-Liberal? He was elected to Parliament nearly fourteen years ago as an Independent Liberal. His aim was to support a truly Liberal policy. He found that the decadent Liberals were no longer true Liberals, and in order to be true to his convictions he had to enter the Reform Party.

The poor Reform Party, according to the still confused Nationalist newspaper, is so hard up for members that it “is now angling to get Sir Joseph Ward into its fold.” That, of course, is the reason why the Reform Party has sought out the strongest Reform candidate that Invercargill has seen for many years to contest Ihc seat against Sir Joseph. It is a queer sort of bait to angle with. We have a shrewd suspicion ourselves that Sir Joseph is something of an angler—but that is another story.