Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1922. POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 143, 14 December 1922, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1922. POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES

The political position has now been made almost as definite as it is possible.for the electors and the returning officers to make it, and the result is passed on to the politicians for more precise interpretation. But the politicians, who had been/Suspending judgment till the conclusion of the official count, are not displaying their usual eagerness to talk. Those from whom the country would particularly like to hear are thinking hard but saying I nothing. The only outcome of the Cabinet meeting held yesterday is Mr. Massey's assurance that he would follow the constitutional course—which is no more than whatjhetold us when the provisional figures were posted a week ago, and what we might all have assumed without his saying anything. The Liberal executive also held a meeting yesterday, but so far as any public information is concerned the result is equally barren. Mr. Wilford, whose voice as the Leader of one of the feeblest of Oppositions was for more -than two years that of one crying in the wilderness, is constrained to silence just when everybody from the Prime Minister downwards would have been glad to hear him speak. Whatever may have been the'result of his executive's meeting yesterday, there will be nothing for publication until a full meeting of the party has considered the position. The. date both of this meeting and of the • Eeform Party's meeting will presumably be early in the New Year. The obligation to silence which responsibility imposes upon the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition js, however, not shared by. Mr. Holland in the position of detachment and freedom which his party still enjoys: The usual penalty of power is responsibility, but for the present Labour has been given power without responsibility by the. division of the opposing forces. If that division is continued, Labour will be able to dictate terms to one or other of the rival parties* or to enforce a dissolution. Id any event, Labour is bound to score heavily, and, as a united and enthusiastic party, to gaic a moral advantage in excess of its numbers either in the House or in the constituencies. The message which Mr. Holland issued to his supporters yesterday states the essentials of the position from the Labour standpoint fairly enough. That "Labour has recorded a magnificent Dominion advance" is. undeniable. That it is likely to serve .as "an incentive to greater achievements" is equally clear. That this ambition will be realised at the next opportunity is highly probable if the other parties continue the tactics which Labour has turned to such excellent advantage. Under the conditions which have now arisen, Mr. Holland looks to his party securing a solid advantage from whichever of the two courses open thp other parties may elect to take. If Labour's foes combine.in the House, he says, Labour will be the Official Opposition. If they fail to combine, there must be another election. We see no possible escape from this dilemma except by a procedure which Mr. Holland does not mention, and which it is to be hoped that the opponents of Labour will also dismiss as impossible. A compromise between Reform and Labour is plainly impossible.. A

working arrangement under which the Liberals would hold office with the consent of Labour is conceivable if they were prepared to pay the price, but whatever the immediate price might be in the way of labour legislation, the ruin in which it must involve the Liberals on the next appeal to the country surely entitles one to dismiss the suggestion as impossible. The probability is, indeed, that any attempt of the kind would land the party in disaster long before the next General Election. Mr. Isitt would fall out at once, since he will not help to put Mr. Massey out by a vote which could onjy be effec-, tive with the help of Red Labour. The only one of the regular Liberals who has given a similar undertaking appears to be Colonel Allen Bell, but there must surely be others who, would at any rate refuse their consent to a compromise which, while maintaining a nominally Liberal Government in office, cbuld only do so by. favour of th© Labour Party. : . Among the Independent Liberals who will apparently refuse to give Labour the balance of power are Messrs. Smith, Statham, and Witty. It may be that, these Independents would prefer a dissolution to keeping a Reform Government in office, but what have the Liberals'to gain from a dissolution precipitated by their refusal as a party to show the necessary toleration and forbeai-ance in the presence of a grave public danger, and resulting in another triangular contest which would as likely as. not make things worse? The interests of Liberalism seem therefore to require just as clearly as those of Reform that the present Government should be kept in office by the acquiescence or support of the Liberals and Independents,^ or some of them. It is, however, difficult to see how- the attitude \of limited liability represented by Mr. Isitt's-election commitments could be maintained throughout a full Parliamentary term. A closer approach to' the Reform Party on the part of those who take Mr. Isitt's view of the position would seem, whether they liked it or not, to be the inevitable outcome of their present attitude. How* for instance, could they attend a Liberal caucus when on every issue deemed of sufficient importance to raise a question of no confidence they would be bound to go into the Government lobby? And where would they be at the next General Election? It looks as though,the Liberal leaders must either come to some arrangement with the Government, or submit to the detachment and estrangement of some of their followers and sympathisers. The emergency is one which demands a broad-minded patriotism on the part of the leaders just as clearly as did the needs of the war