| <trailer><p> <Labor Call, 4 March 1915,> 
| <pb n="2"> </p></trailer>
| <headline><p> <What Happened at Grampians>
| </p> </headline>
| <p> Labor went down at Grampians. That's the 
| concise position of it. While Grampians never 
| could have been called a Labor stronghold, the 
| fact is that Labor won it <mdash>-</mdash> and 
| lost it. Why? Every action has its account. On 
| what account did the people of Grampians change 
| from the progressive thought of Labor to its 
| diametrically opposed "policy of negation" 
| <mdash>-</mdash> Liberalism. Was it the charm or 
| influence of Salmon, that oft-rejected nebulosity, 
| whom to meet was to be disappointed in 
| <mdash>-</mdash> no matter how modest had been your 
| anticipation? Or was it the shortcomings of 
| Labor's candidate, the active and keen McDougall, 
| who was recently Labor's best candidate against 
| the scintillant Iceberg of Flinders? No; of 
| course, the election had wider significance than 
| the personal. If personality were a considerable 
| factor, Labor would have won, for there the 
| advantage was all ours. It is true that the poll 
| was comparatively a light one, and had so few 
| votes been cast at the general election, Labor 
| would never have gained the seat at all. But in 
| the interim, between the general election and the 
| by-election, much has happened, and it is those 
| happenings that lost the seat to Labor. </p>
| <p> THE LABOR VOTER. </p>
| <p> For Labor was returned not only on its policy, 
| but on its courage. People well knew when they 
| voted Labor that much of the platform they 
| subscribed to depended for its enactment on the 
| initiative power of the party that built it. If 
| that party has not the temerity to go boldly 
| forward, the platform is little better than the 
| usual placard of the time-server. </p>
| <p> When the people vote Labor, they mean Labor 
| <mdash>-</mdash> that is, they look for bold and 
| decisive action on the part of their political 
| representatives, else they feel than the 
| lackadaisical Liberal will serve them well enough. 
| Well, they changed from their trust at Grampians, 
| and it is for those who work for Labor and hope 
| unflinchingly, in defeat or victory, for Labor's 
| conquest, to see whence is the weakness. If we 
| wish to see the fault, we cannot miss it, for it 
| looms out in protruding prominence in every place 
| where thought can be traced. </p>
| <p> WE GOT OUR DESERTS. </p>
| <p> Labor lost because it deserved to lose. The 
| courage that the people expected to find in the 
| party <mdash>-</mdash> without which it is 
| different from other political sections only in 
| name <mdash><-mdash> has been seen only in feeble 
| flickers. While the occasion is unprecedented, 
| both in opportunity and necessity, the action of 
| the party has been one mainly of palsied waiting. 
| “Something to turn up” may be good enough as the 
| motto for Fusion, but Laborites want no Micawbers. 
| When they get in office, people think that 
| something has turned up, and wait expectant for 
| the result. When nothing from something is the sum 
| they realise, is it to be wondered that Labor is 
| "turned down" on the first opportunity? </p>
| <p> LABOR'S RECORD. </p>
| <p> What made Labor stand so high in Australia’s 
| favor? Was it not the Fisher Government's work 
| between 1910-13? Every day of that regime was like 
| the day of the village blacksmith, in which there 
| was <mdash>-</mdash> <q> 
| </q></p>
| <p> That Government was esteemed for the 
| unprecedented record of deeds it put up, and it 
| was even more honored for the great attempts it 
| made for further advance. When it went down, it 
| was at the fortuitous turn of a tide, and despite 
| a tremendous advance in public estimation. Its 
| favor was only delayed, as on the next chance was 
| well demonstrated. </p>
| <p> SYNONYM OF EFFORT. </p>
| <p> So Labor's previous administrations have been 
| distinguished by noble, even immediate, 
| self-sacrificing effort. It was not so much its 
| achievement as the ambitious effort Labor made 
| that won it the approval of so many trusting 
| Australians, and elicited a trial from so many 
| more who are ever on the verge of the sceptical. 
| This present administration had unexampled 
| opportunity to win new laurels from a trusting or 
| a sceptical community. The occasion now is so 
| extreme that every day precedents are not of 
| service. The people are hit by dire events, some 
| of which are purely local. Naturally, Labor being 
| in power, it is looked to as the great salvation. 
| In the burden of trouble, who else so fit to 
| relieve as the champions and commissioned valiants 
| of high-placed Labor? Is the hope being borne out? 
| Are not the people who cry for bread often served 
| with a stone? This is so, and Labor is castigated 
| for its ineffectiveness. Not that many believe 
| that Liberalism would have done better in the 
| consuming crisis of the nation. That is not 
| thought; but it is little satisfaction to workers 
| to know that Labor is only a degree of good, where 
| it might be a world of blessing. The shackling 
| constitution is doubtless the bane that has held 
| our representatives. Yet that is just what valiant 
| energy might have overcome. If the constitution 
| stood in the way of the people getting employment; 
| if it opened the avenues of food to the flagrant 
| brigands, ever watching to batten on the people’s 
| needs, would not decisive action, to bar evil, 
| gain endorsement in the wider court <mdash>-</mdash>
| the ballot of the continent? Who would 
| dare to say nay to a Government that earnestly and 
| thoroughly seized the problems of distress now 
| hitting Australia? Some would, no doubt, and such 
| as would baulk their faces in the light would make 
| the task of winning a wide constitution easy. If, 
| in face of Victoria's famine prices of food and 
| famine conditions of toil, any publicist dared to 
| say nay to a force working for amelioration, what 
| would be the result? Though the rest of Australia 
| is not so extremely preyed on as Victoria, the 
| case for the whole continent is urgently in need 
| of Federal action, and Federal action would gain 
| public justification. </p>
| <p> THERE IS NO TRUCE. </p>
| <p>In Great Britain there is an armistice in 
| politics. Only routine or uncontentious matter 
| comes to the House, and vacancies that occur are 
| filled by representatives from the section that 
| had had sway. Very well. In Australia, a truce of 
| a sort was offered Fusion prior to the last 
| election. The offer was scorned. Fusion went 
| fighting to its defeat, and meets the empty places 
| of opposition as assertive and destructive as it 
| is able to be. The two vacancies that have 
| occurred have been vigorously contested, even 
| Kelly, the most venomous of the waspish 
| Fusionists, being imported into the by-election 
| with the gathered fragments of exploded poisons 
| that were thought to be long buried. No truce is 
| accepted by Fusion, and no truce can be thrust on 
| the people while they wait in pinched care for the 
| paternal help of a beneficent Government. Yet, 
| while they want, the Government waits. The 
| colonnade at the head of Bourke-street knows 
| little of the tread of legislators. The doors of 
| Parliament are closed, and the cry of the people 
| echoes from empty homes to deserted halls that 
| should be abrim with succor. </p>
| <p> WHERE IS FISHER? </p>
| <p> Where is this man of sympathy and strength 
| <mdash>-</mdash> Fisher? Is it orations at medley 
| meetings that the magnitude of his Labor is being 
| spent? Is the unparalleled injury being inflicted 
| on the charge he holds not sufficient to make him 
| throw off a conservative caution that is sardonic 
| in a Labor leader? Is his power restricted to the 
| doles he gives the States, so that some scores 
| among the needing thousands may have the offering 
| of work? This is not the Fisher of yore, the 
| Fisher of our admiration ~~ and our hopes. Set to 
| the task that your Herculean energy would once 
| have revelled in, and if the restraining bonds of 
| the constitution are brought to check you in the 
| manifest urgency of the people's need, then they 
| who exercise the restraint will have made the task 
| of freeing Australia from that trammel a light 
| one. Now, the people wait <mdash>-</mdash> </p>
| <p><q> 
| </q></p>
| <p> Labor is in office. Its most trusted men are 
| its Ministers. They can do great things, for they 
| have done them. Now is the greatest occasion for 
| greatness, and they seem to have met a supreme 
| moment by becoming puny. Are they past action or 
| is the torpor now on them a passing symptom of 
| tiredness that will make the positive action soon 
| to show greater by comparison? </p>
| <p> <L.J. VILLIERS.> </p> 
| <p> <Collett-street, Kensington.> </p>