The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1925: THE ALIEN AGITATOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 224, 22 September 1925, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1925: THE ALIEN AGITATOR.

For the cause that lacks assistants, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that toe can do.

The Communist member for Battersea ;is naturally making the best of his | opportunity to bring himself and his j grievances prominently before the British | public. But only those who are prejudiced hopelessly in his favour, because he professes to champion the rights of Labour, are likely to agree that he has a strong case against the American Government. The American Secretary of State, who cancelled Mr. Saklatvala'a passports, and the law officials of the American Labour Department, probably understand the laws of their own country and interpret them accurately; and as the American people, through their Parliament, have expressed the opinion that there is no room among them for aliens professing doctrines such a.s Mr. Saklatvala preaches, the only course open to him is to remain outside. We presume that Mr. Saklatvala'a protest is based on the assumption that every man in a civilised community has the right to say what he pleases. That certainly is tlio line of argument adopted by the leading Communists and revolutionaries in Britain who are endeavouring to undermine and destroy the whole existing economic and social system there. But there are few other countries in the world where such unlimited license is allowed, and where opinions of the kind that Mr. Saklatvala and his friends express are publicly tolerated; and in spite of the strength of the British traditional sympathy for "freedom of speech" it is still an open question whether this devotion to an abstract principle, regardless of consequences, has not already done irreparable harm to the country. Practically everywhere else in the world it is helil Ivy those responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and for the protection of the people, that it is the duty of the Government to protect itself and the interests entrusted to its care against overt attack or secret conspiracy; and the law which excludes Mr. Saklatvala from tho United States is merely a special application of this i generally accepted principle.

In all probability Mr. Saklatvala and his friends hardly need to "be reminded that in Soviet Russia, the only existing instance of a State worked on professedly Communist principles, the Government represses with ruthless severity any attempt on the part of even its domestic critics to express opinions hostile to itself or its policy. Tt is true that from the democratic standpoint the despotic tyranny thus exercised deserves the strongest possible condemnation. But that is for a reason which Mr. Saklatvala is debarred from pleading— the democratic doctrine that the State should simply represent the people, and exists to express their will. Tho dictatorship of the proletariat is an autocratic tyranny pure and simple. But the government of democratic communities merely registers the people's decisions; for if it fails to do so tho people can depose it and substitute another which can be depended upon to represent their views more accurately. Therefore, in such countries as the United States and Australia and New Zealand the State— which is the people in an official capacity—is perfectly justified in denying "freedom of speech" as well as freedom of action to those aliens who, coming from abroad, profess doctrines subversive of the existing social and economic and constitutional system, or attempt to carry their theories into practical effect. This is the justification for the exclusion of Mr. Saklatvala from the United States no less than for tho recent deportation of a Communist agitator from New Zealartd, or for the threat of deportation for dangerous agitators in Australia.