Evening Post. FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1931. KICKS AND HEROICS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 84, 10 April 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1931. KICKS AND HEROICS

When Mr. Scullin talks of meeting the Federal House of Representatives on Tuesday "regardless of consequences" there is a suggestion of heroism in the phrase which will deceive nobody. When, at the beginning of July, as a grievously overworked, harassed, and physically shaken man,.he faced the. emergency presented by the resignation of his Treasurer just before the Budget was due, took over the Budget himself, and saw the session through without his right-hand man, the case was one in which "even the ranks of Tuscany, Could scarce forbear to cheer," and the term "heroic" did not come amiss. The impression was sustained throughout Mr. Scullin's visit to England when under a less severe strain, but in very weak health, he battled for his country's honour against the inflationists and the repudialionists, and in the face of many adverse appearances helped to maintain its credit. But from the moment when immediately after his return he executed that deplorable somersault and capitulated .to Mr. Theodore, even Mr. Scullin's best friends have ceased to suspect him, of heroism. He has rather resembled that "boneless wonder" which was the admiration of Mr. Churchill's childhood, and to which he has recently likened Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. The same skill in falling without hurting himself which Mr. Churchill admires in Mr. Mac Donald has been displayed by Mr. Scullin. But his heroism is really no higher1 than that of the man who, having been kicked several times off an American train on which he was travelling without a ticket, replied to a question about his destination that he was "going to Chicago if his pants held out." How much longer Mr. Scullin's political pants will withstand the assaults of Mr. Lang and Mr. Beasley remains to be seen, but the patience and the patching which he opposes to their efforts are as far removed from heroism as from dignity.

Look! in this .place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd.

Is it possible to imagine some Australian Mark Antony moralising in a similar way over the prostrate form of Mr. Scullin on Tuesday next? If Mr. Scullin's tattered trousers and Mr. Lang's big boots would go as well into heroics as Caesar's mantle and Brutus's dagger it might be possible, but under existing conditions imagination boggles at it. Imagination apart, however, it must be admitted that the difficulty presented by the meeting of the Federal House next week is not all on one side. Mr.Scullin is said to have telegraphed "insisting" that Mr. Beasley and his repudiationist colleagues should be in their places when the session is resumed on the 14th, but Mr. Beasley refuses to be "insisted." He has urgent business, though certainly it is not the business for which he was elected, that will keep him away till the 21st. If Mr. Lang, or whoever else is the keeper of Mr. Beasley's conscience, will not permit him to postpone that business, the Government is likely to fall before he returns with his four colleagues. But this possibility is one that may j well cause Mr. Lang and Mr. Beasley as much concern as it is causing the Prime Minister. They have a profound and by no means unmerited contempt for the shilly-shallying of the Federal Government, and are eager to replace its pale and timid pink with something much niore nearly resembling a real Russian Red, but it is difficult to suppose that even Mr. Lang's eagerness is such as to blind him to the danger of an immediate appeal to the country. The. Easter Conference of the New South Wales Labour Party seemed at' first to mark the climax of his power and of his disastrous policy. On Easter Monday he announced an increase of the State Government's food relief grants by 25 per cent., and boasted that financially "this State is miles ahead of any other," one reason being that it has left the other States to pay, for the present, a large part of its debts. The same day brought us word that the Conference had adopted his three-year socialisation plan, which is obviously derived from a Moscow model and is described by the "Sydney Morning Herald" as "Communism naked and unashamed." But this great Red triumph was promptly followed by a serious set-back.

The Conference, which had accepted the three-year plan on the day of its presentation by a narrow majority, came to a different conclusion after sleeping on it. The plan had been approved on Saturday by 57 votes to 44, but on Monday it was rejected.by 65 to 35, and a much modified scheme, which for the real business that Mr. Lang had in view substituted an innocuous affirmation of aims and ideals, was adopted. The difference between Mr. Lang and the Labour Conference was almost that between a Lenin or a Stalin and a Kerensky. It represents the first sign of independence and the first gleam of sanity on the part of the New South Wales Labour Parly since Mr. Lang took office. Though it has changed Mr. Lang's policy, the Con-

ference has of course not changed Mr. Lang, but it has cast a doubt on his omnipotence, and it has done so very opportunely on llio eve of his ualion-widc campaign. So far us disclosed, the programme of that campaign says nothing of any three-year plan, but it may be cxpecled to include something positive to drape the naked dishonesty of repudiation. Whatever its ultimate shape may be, Mr. Lang can doubtless see that this rebuff in his own State gives him a poor start in his Commonwealth campaign, and that to precipitate a dissolution next week would probably be to court disaster.