LABOUR AND THE CHURCHES

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22081, 1 May 1937, Page 20

LABOUR AND THE CHURCHES

TO TUB EDITOR Or TIIB PBKSS. Sir, —The Leader of the National Party in decrying the relentless march of progress, attributes to a certain extent the declension of his party principles to the socialistic tendencies of the Church. To an Anglican the subject may savour of the price of disestablishment, but his delphic prophecies as regards Communism are culled from an ancient version of political dogmatic formula. The real struggle of our time is the fundamental one between democratic institutions on one side and all forms of dictatorship on the other, the choice between Communism and Fascism being neither fatal nor even a choice to a New Zealander, or any other Em-pire-minded subject. The doctrine of Fascism, bereft of the facade of Hegel's philosophy, is a doctrine of conquest by force and its challenge has resulted in democracies seeing nationalistic adventures in the true light. To magnify the mote in the political eye of one of our former allies, and to ignore the beam of avarice by capitalistic geometrical progression in our own, is to lend one open to the one unforgivable political sin of ineffectuality.—Yours, etc., E S April 26, 1937. ' ' VO THB EDITOa 01" THE FBEBS. Sir,—The following trenchant remark was made by the Leader of the National Party, the Hon. Adam Hamilton, in an address on Friday evening. "At the last election I was sorry to see that some of the churches were beginning to associate with Labour." | One can hardly estimate the trepidation which this unnatural "association" created in the minds of Mr Hamilton and his supporters. To be confronted with the uncomfortable and disturbing fact that some ill-advised churchmen were attempting to trace, in a hazy abstract way, a ;thesis suggesting that semi-starvation, poverty, privation, social degredation and frustration, were conditions not entirely unassociated with the philosophies of political conservatism was most disquieting. A distinct analogy can be drawn between the political expression of the National leader and the present political position in Spain. His invocation to church leaderships to desist from "associating" with "Labour" in any activity for social betterment and advancement, his expectation of allegiance from'churches to the cause of private exploitation and domination of the masses, is .typical of Fascist dictatorships.—Yours, etc., D.H.C. April 25, 1937