The Sun SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1919. PICKING THE WINNERS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1790, 8 November 1919, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1919. PICKING THE WINNERS.

All over the world to-day people are picking winners. All over the world they are doing it in the dark. The thousands who will throng the windows for the next eight days at Riccarton and Addington may have different motives, but they are engaged in precisely the same kind of activity as hundreds of thousands of people the two hemispheres over. Everyone wants to know who is worth backing—politically, commercially, socially. Who is going to be in front when the wild scramble of the next five years is over? How many are coming down at the first hurdle? It is not only in New Zealand that we are gazing darkly into the political future. Australia is looking for a leader and a policy as well: the gallant little Welshman who was so rapturously welcomed a few weeks ago is hiding in to-day's cables from an infuriated mob. Canada has just "scrapped" two and is by no means certain what she will do with the rest. South Africa has lost one big man, and though she is fortunate enough to possess another, no political tipster would lay odds on an uninterrupted run for him. To pass over India and Egypt, where anything may happen any day, America provides another bewildering example of political uncertainty. Who will her next President be? Which of the two great political parties, if either, will' pilot the ship through the next presidential term? Will Woodfow Wilson ever again emerge from the dark shadow of calamity that has engulfed him? And where, if we jump across the Atlantic, is the political saviour of Ireland? No one could put money on Lloyd George. No one ever put it on Carson. Some certainly have put it on de Valera, but they are of the Sinn Fein elect, and superior to logic. George Russell ("A.E.") seems as completely side-tracked as Count Horace Plunkett. Rut Ireland is not the only corner of the kingdom where politics has become a gamble. It has no monopoly either of "hot favourites," "dark horses," or "also rans." It is hardly' an exaggeration indeed to say that the chief political diversion in England to-day seems to be the pricking of the card. A few weeks ago the New York "Sun" was solemnly informed by its representative in London that the political future of England was in the hands of three men—Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Robert Smillie. The New York "Evening Post," as different from the "Sun" as the "cocoa press" from the "Daily Mail," a few days later went a little farther. From the pen of the distinguished journalist who supplies it with specials in the spirit of the "Manchester Guardian" it published a detailed and impressive study of Winston as the uncrowned king of the Conservatives—and Prime, Minister of England, it confessed sadly, within the next 10 years. Since then the discoveries have been more numerous

and more various. "Beyond all question," announced the "Daily News" recently, "Lord Robert Cecil is the outstanding personality in the present House of Commons. ... Mr Lloyd George has more to fear from him than from any other man in public life." The editor of that paper at the time—he has since resigned—was the author of two of the most brilliant pieces of modern political portraiture. It was to be expected, perhaps, that the "Nation" a day or two later should arrive at the same estimate, in more grandiloquent words, but it was not to be expected that "The Times" would. Then about the same time the British public were offered two more | sensations. While the "Westminster Gazette" was complaining politely jthat the Prime Minister was playing second fiddle to the Commons, and even to his own lieutenant, Mr Bonar Law, the "Sunday Pictorial" suddenly produced a sighed article by Lord Rothermere demanding the resignation of the Leader of the House of Commons, and an end at once to the "Conservative Coalition by which we are really governed. Although the country does not realise it, the Conservative leaders exercise supreme authority behind the veil. Further, they exercised practically exclusive and open authority during the first six months of the present disastrous year." After that, what was more natural than that Lord Rothermere himself should be a "hope"? Winston Churchill, it was cabled all over the world, had ruined himself by his disastrous venture in Russia: the new man to watch was the proprietor of the "Sunday Pictorial," who would almost immediately be called to the Cabinet. To add further to the excitement—and confusion—the "Scotsman" announced another hope in Sir Donald Maclean.' Yet the member for Christchurch North thinks that it is possible to stop gambling!