"Sneak" Victory

On a hot summer Saturday down under, 5,000,000 Australians, many in sport clothes, swim suits and fishing boots, went to the polls as the law requires. Within hours after the polls closed, Labor Leader Herbert Evatt sourly acknowledged defeat: "The government's plan to sneak back into power apparently succeeded . . ." Actually, rather than sneaking back, Prime Minister Robert Menzies' Liberal-Country Party coalition won a House of Representatives majority twice as large as its previous one.

The margin of victory was a measure of Australia's disillusion with Labor's Dr. Evatt, whose reputation has suffered ever since some of his aides were mentioned in the Petrov spy case. It was the third general election lost by Evatt, and it put his continued leadership of the Labor Party in serious doubt. There was even a chance that, when final results were in, Evatt would lose his own seat in Parliament.

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