Australia: Vanquished Vietniks

"Foreign policy is the very core of this election, if foreign policy is taken to mean the wisdom of being involved in Viet Nam." So said Australia's Prime Minister Harold Holt last week as he gambled his political future on his determination to keep Australia's 4,500 men in Viet Nam. In a bitter election campaign between Holt's Liberal-Country Party coalition and the Labor Party of Arthur Calwell, Australia's Vietniks turned out in full force, organizing the most violent demonstrations ever staged against an Australian political leader.

At a Sydney rally last week, spectators hooted and booed Holt for his pro-Viet Nam stand; as he left the rally, a jeering mob of 500 swarmed around him, pummeling, kicking and finally spitting on him. When police finally got Holt to his car, a few diehards threw themselves across the road. The follow ing night at a Melbourne rally, demonstrators were at it again, chanting "Judas!" and "Traitor!" "If the Labor Party cannot control these demonstrations," shouted an exasperated Holt, "what chance have they in controlling our destiny?" Most of Australia's 6,000,000 voters got the point. At week's end, as the election returns piled up, Holt's coalition had gained four seats in the country's 124-seat House of Representatives and run its total to 75 v. 43 seats for the Labor Party, with six seats still in doubt.