RECENT HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 93, 21 April 1939, Page 9

RECENT HISTORY

MR. MENZIES'S RESIGNATION

FROM CABINET

Mr. R. G. Menzies resigned from the Australian Cabinet on March 14 because of his disapproval of the Government's course relating to national insurance. He also resigned his post as deputy-leader of the ParliamentaryUnited Australia Party. According to the Canberra correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald" he had remained in the Cabinet with "the knowledge that he was facing certain defeat .. . until the capitulation of Mr. Lyons and Mr. Casey (the Federal Treasurer) to the Country Party, and then gracefully retired from the Ministry with the reputation of being the only U.A.P. Minister whs had adhered to his principles by not giving way to the Country Party ultimatum." The "ultimatum" threatened withdrawal of support if the Government did not abandon its already legislated programme of national insurance for a new Country Party plan.

The correspondent also shed light on the personal side of the affair. He reported that "the views which he (Mr. Menzies) held on many subjects had made him appear an uncompromising opponent in the Cabinet room," and that "faced with the Country Party's demand for the emasculation of the legislation on national insurance, which it had helped to place on the Statute Book . . . Mr. Menzies stuck to his attitude that he would not be a party to the repeal of his Government's legislation." Mr. Menzies was said "to have found easy victims among the slower-thinking Country Party Ministers when he engaged upon 'debunking' their proposed new scheme of insurance," to have torn to shreds "proposals by certain Ministers on subjects they happened to bring forward," but to have revealed no ill-feeling towards his colleagues after his resignation.

"In spite of his amazing gifts Mr. Menzies has never been a popular figure," it was declared. "Perhaps he is .just a little too brilliant, and his talents so suggestive of conscious superiority that many of his normal natural reactions might easily be mistaken for arrogance. The existence of personal opposition to him in his own electroate is well known, and before his resignation there had been talk of the possibility of his defeat at the next elections. His recent stand, however, may rehabilitate him."

At Canberra after his departure the Ministry was declared to have uttered sighs of relief at the loss of its uncompromising critic,