National Government

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 35, 5 November 1942, Page 6

National Government

■Sir, —Like many others, I read with interest in your last Saturday's issue Mr. Mazengarb’s dissertation upon Mr. Holland’s resignation from the War Administration. There would, however, perhaps have been even more interest taken in a like discussion, from the point of view of constitutional principle and practice, of the converse course adopted by the Prime Minister hiniself, who has been so keen a critic of Mr. Holland. Comparatively early in the present war - it came to be pretty generally understood that Mr. Fraser, following Mr. Churchill’s great example, favoured the formation of a National Cabinet drawn from both political parties, but'that he was overruled by his Ministerial colleagues and the Labour Party Conference. This understanding was certainly confirmed. by Mr. Fraser himself when, in the course of last month’s “no confidence” debate, he said that he had felt all along that the overwhelming need was for unity and that “to achieve it he had been prepared to agree to a National Government.” Now, the logical implication from this is that Mr. Fraser has for the last, three vears or so been clinging to his office as 'Prime Minister although, conscious “all along” that he was presiding over a.Ministry of a constitution entirely different from what he himself believed it should have been in the interests of ■ our war effort and our country. Which is the more admirable decision, Mr. Fraser’s, under such circumstances, to hang on to office, or Mr. Holland’s to cut adrift from a half-baked, so-called War Administration, which was not prepared to deal adequately with the members of n powerful trade union which, to ■the grievous detriment of both war effort and the general welfare of the country and its people, set it at defiance? This is a question for Mr. Fraser to answer if he is not to lay himself open to the charge of being not the leader of his party.—l am, etc.,.QUERIST. Hastings, November 2.