MENACE OF EXTREMISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 300, 19 December 1922, Page 7

MENACE OF EXTREMISM.

MR. L. M. ISITT'S FEARS.

ORGANISED RESISTANCE. i (By TelegrapL—Own Correspondent.) CHRISTCHX'RCH, Monday. In addressing his friends and supporters to-night, Mr. L. M. Isitt said that throughout the campaign for C/hristchurch North some of the most devoted workers on his committee were staunch members of the Reform party. He wanted to say that the pledge that secured that support was not on his part a bargain. The secretary of the Reform Ix-ague would tell them that he made it plain to him that while, of course, he was very anxious that Reform should not run a candidate and so increase the chance of the Labour candidate getting in. his pledge of 1922 was his pledge of ]9lf>. It was not a matter of convenience, but of conviction and, whether or no the Reform organisation determined to run a candidate, his pledge would remain unaltered. After thanking the Liberals and the Welfare League for the help they had given, he said there were one or two things he was very anxious to utter. Some of his Liberal friends had thought his position extreme, hut it was the result of careful consideration. In his opinion, not only the Dominion, but the British Empire was face to face with a menace in comparison with which the differences between the two loyal parties were insignificant. For years he had been trying to convince his brother members, both Liberal and Reform, that the extreme Labour party was making rapid and dual progress—progress in the strength of their revolutionary socialistic conviction, and progress numerically. He had been thought an alarmist. Very few members believed that extreme Labour would add to its strength in the election, but now they had doubled their number, and he understood that their vote amounted to over InI.OOO.

The question was, how were they to meet this crowing danger? Tn the past both the Liberals and the Reformers had been to blame. Thev had yielded and been placative where they ought to have stood firm. They had been '.<\)e and silent when Labour extremists, Sundays and week days, were ceaseless in their propaganda. If they really loved their Empire and believed in constitutional Government, it behoved both parties to meet propaganda with propaganda, and throughout the years, not merely at election time, to go in for organised resistance.