The Bruce Government is making good progress in Parliament. The early attempt of the Labour Opposition to harass the Ministry has failed, and the Prime Minis ter has not only made his opponents gape, but also his own supporters in the press and in the country. 1 of the outlook of a friendly s, 1 may quote this one paragraph out of a leading Melbourne daily newspaper of the present date:—'Mr. Bruce's parliamentary capacity is satisfactory; the people still await his real performances." The prospects of attack from those members who were his colleagues in the late Hughes' Government is not a serious one. There is no more astute parliamentarian than Mr. W. M. Hughes, and though Mr. Bruce is being constantly told that this leader is seeking to undermine his influence, he is not likely to precipitate a quarrel which, after all, would be disastrous to them both, though manna to a section of the daily press. Being safeguarded thus from flank attack, the Prime Minister is able to push forward his programme according to plan. There is nothing very startling in it and, as one press commentator puts it, he is clearing away the wreckage from previous Governments before he starts to build on his account. Criticism of this sort does not really amount to very much. but it indicates how the Prime Minister's friends are secking to minimize the fact that he is not building the airy castles which they prophesied would be erected so soon as the counterpart of Lloyd George was driven from the leadership.
Mr. Bruce is still determined to adjourn Parliament towards the end of next month and to depart for London. He will take with bim an Assistant Minister—Senator Wilson—and probably some of the heads of the two branches of Defence. Major-General Sir Neville Howse, v.c., atp., will first of all go to the League of Nations Assembly and later on join Mr. Bruce in London. Gen. Howse is a new member of the Federal Parliament, but his distinctions were won in the medical fields of South Africa (where he won the V.C.), German New Guinea, Samoa, and later. in Europe, and he is regarded as-an expert in medical organization. Presumably he will attend the Imperial Conference and, if I am not mistaken, it will be a novelty to have a medical man at one of these gatherings for strictly medical reasons.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.