WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taihape Daily Times, 24 April 1919, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.

PRESENT * AND FUTURE

(Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, April 23

Sir James Allen and the Hon. D. H. Guthrie have made it abundantly clear that in their desire for a strong Government to deal with the ia±'ter-war problems which will crowd upon the country during the next two or three years, they regard a National Cabinet as a necessary part of the political equipment of the Dominion. The Act-ing-Prime Minister is a little more diffident than his colleague is about the matter. He- is not quite sure the present Cabinet provides all the essentials of a strong Government. He admits the question is open to argument. Bnt, given the strength, he would not trouble very much, so he says, about the colour of the party in the ascendency. The Minister for Lands, on the other hand, thinks nothing could be better than the present arrangement, nothing more conducive towards wise legislation, vigorous administration, and the general welfare of the community. THE ACTING LIBERAL LEADER.

How far these gentlemen represent the views' of their absent party chief —if they represent them at all —tit would be idle to speculate just now. It is a matter on which Mr Massey will be able to express himself more freely on his return from London than he could before his departure. Meanwhile there is little to be drawn from the Acting-Leader of the Liberal Party on the subject. Mr MacDonald returned last night from a visit to the Hawke's Bay district where an accumulation of departmental business claimed his attention, and when asked this mom in::' :l" he had anything to say concerning the political position he thought the subject was scarcely open for discussion, at any rate by those who were committed to the maintenance of the party truce during the absence of Mr Massey and Sir Joseph Ward. THE USEFUL OPPOSITION. But Mr MacDonald was not disinclined to discuss the political out-look in general terms. He did not claim that the National Cabinet had realised ail the high expectations of its friends, but he believed it had striven with a single purpose to pilot the country successfully through an extremely critical stage in its history. Probably it would have done better had it been confronted by a strong Opposition, but, of course, an Opposition of any sort was foreign to the idea with which it was originally formed. Personally, he believed that Sir Joseph Ward's scheme for dissociating the war from the general politics of the country would have worked well enough, and that the Government, while having the unanimous support of Parliament on questions of defence, would have had behind it a strong and well organised Opposition. THE OUTLOOK. The Acting-Leader of the Liberal Party could say nothing about the intentions of his party chief, but he was satisfied himself that a largo majority ■of the (doctors were taking a much keener interest iu politics at the present time titan they had done for many years before. They were not likely, seeing the inevitable limitations lying upon a National Cabinet, to look with a vo>,-y kindly eye towards coalition, winch, whatever its advantages in the way of safety, was not associated in the public mind with the idea of progress. Tho old party bitterness, he Imped, tv-s de-ad for ever, but the new narty rivalry, inspired by the higher ideals ereated by the war, should do much to shape the destiny of the Dominion along the sam e linos that make for justice and comfort and largely increased development and production.