RESPECT TO COLOURS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 139, 14 June 1934, Page 6

RESPECT TO COLOURS.

The attitude of the public complained about by "Officer" and "Hats Off" in regard .to the King's Birthday parade incident can be-easily accounted for. I was not present, for Ido not attend such functions. It is not a matter of. ignorance, nor of larrikanism, apathy, nor conscientious objection. It is simply that the great mass of the people, in the light of the tragic socio-economic problems confronting them to-day, of unemployment, starvation, want and misery, which only the purblind, prejudiced, class-conscious minority refuse to see, are becoming fed up with ostentatious displays of patriotism, militarism and suchlike formalities that are being perpetuated whenever an opportunity presents itself. Your correspondents must surely realise that the temper of the people has radically changed since 1914. Then the cry was "Make the world safe' for Democracy." 'Twenty years _ later those of .us who are left merely find it safe for Demockery: Many ex-soldiers in our midst., and "their eons who are now growing up with no prospects whatever in front of them, are finding it very difficult to keep, a ramshackle roof, the property of other people, over their heads. lam convinced, "from a perusal of letters that appear in too many of our daily journals, that a reconstruct ion of our social fabric, on sound and eaiie lines, about the last thing some people want. Personally, being so convinced; I would consider myself a hypocrite to go out on a cold day and pay liomage to a system I found, from a brief experience, to be the yost class-conscious thins on earth. So why strain at a gnat of military etiquette? If the dead could speak (I am not saying one word about the Anzac Day parades), they would tell us to look after ourselves and our needy neighbours and mako the best of what we've got. J. ORR.