FEDERAL POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 25, 29 January 1918, Page 7

FEDERAL POLITICS

MR. HUGHES STILL SURV/IVES. .(FKOB ODR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 23rd January, Interest in political affairs, for the moment, has resolved itself into a sort of guessing competition. Everyone is trying to guessi how long the present Nationalist, Win-the-War Cabinet will hang together, and what will happen.when.it bursts asunder. There is unanimity on only one point—namely, the life of the Cabinet will be short. Mr. Hughes, exercising all the cleverness of an old and dexterous politician, • is riding the storm, but. the general opinion is that the Btorm will presently engulf him. . Mr. Hughes'3 Government, as was expected, survived the No-confidence motion moved by tl% leade? of the Labour Opposition. The voting was on purely party lines, but the Government had some anxious moments/ There was a considerable section of the old Liberal Party which was restless. It had.never brought itself to love the stranger who had been imported to. act as leader,- and it had allowed its fine feelings—or such fine feelings- as can survive political turmoil ili Australia —to be outraged by the manner in which Mr. Hughes' broke the pledge he gave that he would not attempt to govern if the referendum, were defeated. This section was eager to see Mr. Hughes deposed, but it was scared into inactivity by the threat of! the followers of Mr. Hughes that they would join the Labour Party again if their leader were not Prime Minister. Then there was another section which did its utmost to secure Coalition with the Labour Opposition, with a view to forming a coalition Cabinet for the period of the war. This most laudable plan was smothered by the Labour hatred of Mr. Hughes. The Labour men were not all averse to coalition,, but they would 1 not have Mr. Hughes at any price. So the National Party not unnaturally regards its leader as a sort of Old Man of the Sea. They cannot proceed without him, apparently, and yet he is the burden that prevents them making any real progress. This is a state of affairs that obviously cannot endure, and already there is much talk of the collapse of the party. Mr. Hughes must go— they all insist on that. With Mr. Hughes will go also a number of Labour men who left the official Labour Party oia>the' conscription issue, and who will gladly return to the fold. It is doubtful .if enough members will be left in the National Party to keep its Cabinet in office. '

No one wants to see the country in the turmoil of another general election, but, in view of the pronounced restlefsnessiin the National _ Party, it looks like, the only way out.