POLITICAL LEADERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 145, 21 June 1934, Page 6

POLITICAL LEADERS.

AUSTRALIAN SPECULATION.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, .June 14.

Mr. Latham has got safely back from his "Good-will'' mission to the East, and he lias already explained both at Brisbane and Sydney that his efforts have produced a beneficial effect upon the commercial and political relations of the Commonwealth with the Orient. This is probably true, and was generally expected. But what most Australians were most anxious about was the possibility that Mr. Latham might have been cajolcd into committing himself, on behalf of Australia, to some definite form of trade agreement which we might not be willing to endorse. The Japanese are dexterous diplomats, and while the Latham Mission was at Tokyo the Ministers who met our delegates certainly tried to convey the impression that they were negotiating with Australia for some sort of commercial understanding. But Mr. Latham is a very intelligent man and a well-trained lawyer; he declined to be overreached, and, so far as can bo judged at present, he seems to have justified entirely the confidence that we reposed in him.

Mr. Latham's return, however, brings up again a question that is likely to involve important con-sequences, in regard to Australia's political future. Mr. Latham is tired of politics, for which, temperamentally, he is not well fitted, and lie would prefer to take up work of another kind. The Chief Justice of Australia, Sir Frank Gavan Duffy, is now advanced in years, and it is generally anticipated that he will shortly resign and that his place will be filled by Mr. Latham.

But if this happens, who will fill Mr. Latham's scat 011 the Federal Cabinet? In Victoria it is confidently expected that Mr. Menzies, an able lawyer, now Attorney-General in the State Ministry, and one of the beet speakers and most vigorous personalities on the Australian public stage,. will succeed Mr. Latham at Canberra. This seems extremely probable, but it is also likely that the friends and admirers of Mr. Menzies will strive for his further advancement, and that his ambitious eye is already fixed on the post of Prime Minister as the goal of his efforts. All these things have been considered carefully by those whose business it is to take into account the possibility of political changes, and it may be said at once that there are many obstacles in Mr. Menzies.' path which he will not easily surmount. For one thing, he is notoriously on bad terms with the U.C.P., and though the Country party and its leader do not get on very well with Mr. Lyons, there would be far lees chance of unity between U.C.P. and U.A.P. if Mr. Menzies were Prim© Minister, Again, Mr. Stevens must be considered. It is believed that he will sooner or later leave State politics for the Federal sphere, and once at Canberra he will certainly aspire to Cabinet rank. He will then be a formidable rival to Mr. Menzies, and though he has' announced that he has no intention of contesting the Martin seat—the vacancy created by the death of Mr. Holman is to be filled at a by-election on July 14—there will be other times and other ways. Already the prospect of a political conflict for supremacy between Mr. Stevens and Mr. Menzies has appealed so strongly to the public imagination that the "Sydney Morning lie raid," looking to the future, envisages a new Federal Cabinet in which Mr. Menzies will be AttorneyGeneral and Mr. Stevens will control Australian Finance under the primacy of Mr. Lyons.

For it is a remarkable fact that as the Federal elections draw nearer—it is now reported with some show of authority that they will be held in the last week of September —most' people seem to feel that their regard for Mr, Lyons and their confidence in him have taken a new lease of life. Even the "Sydney Morning Herald," which still permits itself to yearn for Mr. Bruce, now regards Mr. Lyons as the only possible leader of a United Australia party, and last week its unwilling testimony "to his importance and value was confirmed most emphatically by what amounts to a unanimous vote of confidence offered him by his colleagues at i Canberra.