Melbourne, Dec. 29.
The echoes of the Commonwealth general elections have not died away yet. There is still some counting going on, but it seems beyond all question that the result is a complete victory over all the forces of unrest, including the Sinn Fein section, which officially launched itself in Australia at the great convention held in Melbourne last November. Archbishop Mannix, the recognized leader of the movement, is now advising the strengthening of the party by the exclusion of the Protestants, who belonged to the Labour party, but did not vote with it. It is a quaint reversal of the position of a few Years ago when the Labour party, especially in the State of Victoria, was excluding Roman Catholics from its official ranks, because they owed allegiance to. an authority which dared to dispute political supremacy with itself.
It is probably significant that in the State of Queensland a by-clection for what seemed an absolutely safe seat for Labour, having returned Labour candidates by" substantial majorities for the past 12 years, has unexpectedly chosen an} Opposition Liberal.
Tinep or Strive, In New Zealand, the neighbouring Dominion, the Conservative party, calling itself the Reform party, coalesced with the Liberals, who are backed by the Labour party and extremists, for the period of the war, but immediately upon peace being reached the Liberal leader, Sir Joseph Ward, and following broke away. This neccssitated an appeal to the country, and within less than a week of the! Commonwealth elections the! Dominion electors heavily defeated the Liberals and Radicals et hoe! genus emne, and gave Mr. Massey, the Reform Prime "Minister. a majority of 50 in a House of 80
In both Commonwealth' and! Dominion the returned soldiers undoubtedly voted for the party of constitutional progress. and against the disturbers of the political freedom of the people, the teachers of state socialism and the persistent. agitators} in the industrial unions. Five years of war, of war precautions, of close government control, of in: dustrial dislocation and of daily anxiety and abnormal excitement have had their effect. The people want a rest, want to get back to ing the liquor traffic, and the total prohibitionists regi their chances of victory with high hopes. During the war a vote had been taken, and prohibition was then decisively defeated by the votes vf the New Zealand soldiers who were abroad. This was construed to be an expression of their resentment that a vital question should be debated and voted upon in their absence from the country. This time, the soldiers having returned, the result was to be reversed. The issues placed before the voters were Continuance of the traffic.
State control of the traffic.
Total prohibition.
There was no preference voting, and the result has proved that the idea of state control was complete ly overshadowed by the first and last issues. An absolute majority was necessary for a win, and the result, with some few additional votes to come in, which are not expected to alter the result, is that prohibition is defeated, by continuance and state control combine ed, by a few thousand votes.
It is certain that even were prohibition carried by a narrow majority it would be impossible to enforce it. New Zealand has been experimenting in liquor control for many years. It adopted the no licence system, which practically meant that liquor could not be sold retail in hotel bars, but only wholesale. But this principle was applied only in such districts as voted for it, with the result that the no licence districts provided customers for the hotels just beyond their borders, and liquor was brought into the no licence dis tricts on the wholesale scale, and consumed ju like ratio. Another all will he taken in three years' time, during which interval it is ible that the teetotallers will realize that some measures of reform might he more easily obtaine.] than the right to impose their will upon the whole community.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.