Melbourne, April 19.
The Easter Holidays have passed over without any remarkable occurrence. There have been many accidents, but little crime. Accidents nowadays chiefly take the form of motor car and motor-cycle mishaps, which may in part be attributable to the fact that with plenty of money the Australian holiday maker hires cars, and has a good time with the bottle, or perhaps recklessly driving his own car or motor-cycle with side-car attached, and not being endowed with too much experience in the art, fails to negotiate curves on the mountain roads, avoid other traffic in the suburbs, does not guard against side-slips, and is not prepared at once to meet the emergency of a blow-out. As to the absence of serious crime, it is possible that the shadow of the gallows now hanging over the man Ross, whose outrageous wickedness has aroused all Australia, may have had a sobering effect. So far as Melbourne is concerned, it is believed that with his execution the police will bring to an, end a widespread criminal organisation. Two of the witnesses against him were housebreakers, one of whom is freely alleged "to have been. implicate ed in a double murder of an old couple in the bush, who were supposed to have had money hidden away.
In Sydney the change of Government may have had an. influence amongst the more reckless criminals, one of whom is even now awaiting his third trial for murder. The new Government is not likely to be influenced by the professed belief of the Labour party that capital punishment should be abolished. In al the States the magistrates and judges are in-fioting more severe punishments, and these doubtless are also a deterrent. As for the holidaymakers generally, there still seems no lack of money. The Randwick races and the Royal Show in Sydney drew record crowds, while in Melbourne the railway returns show that both passenger traffic and revenue exceeded those of last to get into close touch with the political organisations upon which he must depend for support at the next general elections. There is evidence that in both South and Western Australia he may find a difficulty in securing support for his ex-Labour followers in the teeth of the overwhelming strength of the Liberal sections of the Nationalist. organisations. In Tasmania the Nationalists are threatened by a breakaway of the primary producers, and in Victoria Mr. Hughes has the powerful Melbourne press agauist _him—chiefly because he is Mr. Hughes and declines to bow the knee to their authority. On the other hand, in New South Wales, Mr. Hughes' own political State, he is still popular, and the city press openly assert. that he is far more so than in Victoria. Queensland may be_relied upon to support the Prime Minister. The pastoral and sugar industries have much to thank him for, and the Labour government of that State has disgusted Labour electors, who will be glad to vote for followers of their old leader, even though officially declared "black" by the Australian Labour Party. In some quarters it is alleged that the Prime Minister contemplates an early appeal to the electors, though it is difficult to see how he can bring this about unless parliament, by defeating him on some vital question, gives him excuse to ask for a dissolution. Mr. Hughes is 58 years of age, and physically a frail man, but he is possessed of indomitable energy and pluck, and is without exception the shrewdest public man in all Australia. In 1916 he found himself Prime Minister with a following of 13 members in a House of 75, having been deserted by the rest of his party. Most men would have resigned, but he negotiated a coalition with the Liberals, has twice since successfully appealed to the electors, and is still at the head of the Coalition Government So long as he remains in parliament he is bound to dominate the situation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.