AUSTRALIAN OPINION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11220, 11 December 1911, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN OPINION.

GREAT MORAL VICTORY.

A DOUBLE SURPRISE.' '

THE WRITING ON THE WALL.

Press Association—llfectric Teleeraph-- Copyright, Received Monday, 8.55 a.m.

SYDNEY, Monday,

Canon Bovce states that the Now Zealand Prohibition vote is a magnificent moral victory. In the Empire this generation had probably seen no greater moral victory. It looks as if next election would moan the death and burial of tho whole liquor traffic in New Zoaland. The Daily Telegraph commenting on the elections, says the result is a double surprise—the success of the opposition in making up so much leeway and strength of tho prohibition vote. The latter suggests that the time is coming when Now Zealand will go absolutely dry. When only about 10,000 votes on a total poll of nearly half a million wore required to ensure this, it is a fair conclusion that the writing is on the wall. Dealing with tho Labour vote tho Telegraph says that the polling shows that the vote is beginning to organise. Tho Herald says that tho voting so far has disclosed a state of feeling which must bo as unwelcome to tho Prime Minister as it was unexpected by the peoplo in goneral. If the Ministry has fallen it will do so rather by tho automatic loss of public interest than any other cause. The prohibition vote is as remarkable in its way as the parliamentary polling. Though the three-fifths majority was not secured it so near as to give the liquor trade an extremely precarious basis of popular support.