THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 143, 19 June 1922, Page 4

THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE.

Mr. Arthur Henderson does the cause of freedom a service by his plain statement, made to an international Labour gathering in London, of the difference between tho ideals of British Labour and those of the Russian extremists who direct the Russian Government and the Third International. The essential difference, he says, is that democracy is on one side and dictatorship on theother. While the Communists despise free speech, a free Press, and free elections, British Labour adheres to the <»1 <I ideals of popular liberty. This is put with complct-e truth and admirable point. Mr. Henderson and his fellow moderates stand in the line of inheritance of the old British struggle for freedom —freedom of speech and thought, and the freedom of each citizen to take a full share according to his lights in the political development of the country. Moscow rcprcr-cnts an ideal exactly opposite to this, the rule of a class operating through all the familiar forms of tyranny which in Britain were put down long ago. ln Soviet eyes freedom is a bourgeois superstition. Citizens of the British Commonwealth everywhere must make their choice between these ideals. They cannot consistently keep a foot in each camp. They cannot serve two masters. If any man chooses one day to sympathise with Rovictism and 6tir>port any part of its programme, and the next day poses as a loader of democracy, the community is entitled to ask 'mm to say definitely and finally where ho stands. To attempt to mix Soviet sympathies with service to real democracy is a mockery.