WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1919, Page 6

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 after-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 Acting-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. But given the strength he would not trouble very much, so he says, about the colour of the party in the ascendancy. The Minister of 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 him at all —it 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 teturn 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. Mac Donald returned last night from a vjsit to the Hawke's Bay district where an accummulation of departmental business claimed his attention, and when asked this morning if 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 outlook in geheral .terms. He did not claim that the National Cabinet had realised all 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 disscfciating 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 large majority of the electors were taking a much keener interest in politics at the present time than they had done for many years before. They were not likely, seeing the inevitable limitations lying upon a National Cabinet, to look with a very kindly eye towards "coalition," which, whatever its advantages in the way of safety, was not associated in the public mind with the idea of progress. The old party bitterness, he hoped, was dead for ever, but the new party rivalry, inspired by the higher ideals created by the war, should do much to shape the destiny of the Dominion along the sane lines that make for justice and comfort and largely increased development and production.