Dissolution

Lahore, Tuesday, October 14, 1924

ALTHOUGH it has been generally known for some days that one of two things, either the resignation of Government or the dissolution of Parliament, was about to take place, few had anticipated until the event actually happened that the Government would fall over the question of the prosecution of the Worker's Weekly. The noise that was made over this matter was justly described by Mr T.P. O'Connor as "a miserable little tempest in the tiniest tea-cup ever produced in political life," and what had generally been expected was that after this noise was reverberated in Parliament it would be allowed to die a natural death. It is not meant, of course, that the issue was of no importance whatever. In spite of the explanation given by the Premier, the impression left upon the public mind by the withdrawal of a pending prosecution in a case of this nature was bound to be unpleasant. Granted that the prosecution was a mistake, as it undoubtedly was, on account of the advertisement which it was bound to give to the Communist party, whose organ the offending journal was. Could it possibly be denied that the withdrawal of the prosecution was bound to have substantially the same effect? The answer was that the advertisement which a necessarily prolonged trial, followed either by a conviction and sentence, or what was more probable in this case, the failure of the prosecution, would have given to the party would have been immeasurably greater than what the withdrawal of the prosecution did give. But this was exactly the difference which any Opposition would try to minimise and which the Opposition in this case did actually minimise.