The first obvious reflection upon the results of the general elections for the House of Representatives is that the anti-Labour elements in the electorates have returned only 30 members in support of the Labour Party as compared with 45 on the other side. The word '"'anti-Labour" is not used as many do, for the fact seems established that sectional interests may vote anti-Labour in the first instance, but where Secondary votes are to counted these anti-Labourites may quite conceivably and logically vote pro-Labour rather than pmo-anything else. The important fact is that the Ministerialists have about og many real supporters as Labour, which leaves a miscellaneous corner party—all sitting on the Ministexial cross-benches—of about 15. The cross-benches, therefore, hold the balance of power, and Labour has no more right than the Ministerialists to say that these cross-benchers will support their party as much as the Opposition. It is quite on the cards that a modus vivendi will be found whereby the Government will be carried on and Labour kept in.opposition.
It requires little political acumen to discover that, if there is a breakup of the Nationalists or the Country Party, all the ex-Labow' followers of each will immediately revert to their original political church. To ask them to change and support the people who have stoned their prophets is to seek the unattainable. Sooner or later this must happen, and despite the fact that the Prime Minister is trying to hold the Nationalists together in order to keep his Labour followers from reverting to Labourism, with ity tendency towards Communism, first principles will eventually prevail, unless the Conservatives, Lil and so forth welcome the ex-Labour followers into their ranks as honest converts, instead of, as at present, treating them as suspected spies and dis honourable renegades.—It seems likely that the final justification of this view will not be forthcoming for three years, but then, saving some special intervention, it seems inevitable.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.