PEACE—YES!

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 64, 15 March 1916, Page 7

PEACE—YES!

WHEN WE CAN DICTATE TERMS. PREMIER'S REPLY TO RUNANGA. (By Telegraph.—tress Association.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The Prime Minister, the Right Hon. W. F. Massey, has received a copy of the ' following resolutions passed at a meet- ] ing held recently in Runanga to consider the recruiting question: (1) That, this meeting of citizens of Runanga will have nothing to do with the recruiting scheme, ' as the Government only wants to push responsibility off their own shoulders on to public bodies; (2) that this meeting urges upon the Government the importance of recommending to the Home Government the advisability of stating clearly peace terms, and of opening negotiations with the Central European Powers with a view to arriving at an early cessation of hostilities." Mr. Massey has replied to these resolutions in a memorandum addressed to the Mayor of Runanga. He states: — "I must confess that I find it difficult to believe that any body of patriotic citizens could refuse the appeal that has been made to them for help in a- great national work, because of the plea that the Government only wants to push its responsibilities on to the shoulders of local bodiesi Your citizens must be aware that we, in common with the rest of the Empire, are engaged in a struggle on which our very existence as a free nation depends. It must therefore be obvious to them that any task that so vitally concerns our nation in its hour of trial is as much the concern of every local body and of every citizen of the Dominion, as it is of the Government "or the Recruiting Board, because all will suffer or benefit equally according to the failure or success of our efforts. As to their second resolution, I wish to say most emphatically that the National Government, and the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the Dominion are at one in their fixed determination to see this fight through to a victorious finish, until the menace of Prussian militarism aud domination, and all the evils they imply, are for ever ended; and until we are in a position not to negotiate, but to dictate, terms of peace to an enemy that has shown itself lost to all sense of decency, humanity, and honourable obligation." Runanga is a small coal mining district, four miles by rail from Greymouth.