COUNT VON LUCKNER’S VISIT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22357, 22 March 1938, Page 8

COUNT VON LUCKNER’S VISIT

TO TIU IDITOI OF TUB PRESS. Sir, —Some time since a society hailing from the Hamilton district petitioned the Prime lAmvslet to disallow Count von Luckner to land in New Zealand. This was when he was visiting some of the South Sea Islands. Now he is here, we have the Federation of Labour objecting to his presence. So far as I know the Count acquitted himself as a gentleman and sportsman during the war. He took no life and treated all those whom he captured with the utmost consideration. Moreover, I notice in your issue of March 21, and under the heading “Reply to Visitor.” dated March 19, Wellington, the following from the Federation of Labour: “They had no objection to his talking propaganda. In fact, they welcomed it and repeated the invitation to do it at a public meeting, where the other side of the case could be presented.” Yes, and where the same kind of patient hearing could be accorded the Count as was lately accorded Messrs Hamilton and Holland by their representatives or supporters at Timaru. Is the whole population to be stultified in the eyes of outsiders by these absurd attitudes of a few? The’ three tailors of Tooley street are not in it, and it appears high time that those who dissent from these one-eyed ideas became vocal and allowed the Count to see that there are in New Zealand those who dissociate themselves from these antics, respect him for his war record, and are grateful to know that a return to New Zealand is a pleasure.—Yours, etc., . CHARLES R. CLARK. March 21, 1933. TO TH* EDITOR 0E TH*' PRESS. Sir,—Anyone at all conversant with Trades Hall psychology in New Zealand would have guessed that as soon as Count von Luckner’s proposed visit to ’these shores was made public months ago, the strong objections then voiced by pur; Labour unions here would bear fruit when he did. arrive in the direction of persistent attempts to make him the butt of the self-evi-dent and bitter, hatred for Hitler and Nazism by these people, With them the ineradicable conviction that the New Zealand brand of unionism and Socialism is the only fit and proper ethics for any enlightened community amounts to a religion, if not a bigoted fanaticism. For a. start, these rabidly hostile critics of Hitlerism.' as they term it, tried their utmost to block the Count from landing, presumably -scared stiff by the dire contingency of a jolt in the solar plexus of thefr precious organisations by this minatory sea devil from the misty past. Finding, however, that the Government was not ready or willing to play the role -of Trades Hall catspaw, they waited their opportunity to vent their annoyance at being foiled in the attempt to get one on to the Nazi crowd, as they thought. The entirely unwarranted offensiveness and bad taste of their invitation to debate (save the mark!) with a perfectly harmless foreigner on pleasure bent, vrtll be apparent to all fair-minded citizens; but one can only stand aghast at the fantastic distortion of the Count’s declining the invitation into his being guilty of disseminating malignant propaganda. The whole trouble with these people is that so deep-rooted is their belief that Hitler is first and last and all the time the world’s enemy No. 1 of the working class movement, they are roused to transports of unprintable fury by von Luckner’s simple statement that these wonderful German labour organisations are solidly behind the Ogre of the Fatherland. In staging such an exhibition of blatant narrow-mindedness and bullying irritation tactics, the Labour Federation has surely out-Heroded the people they have got their knife into, even taking the latter at their worst. — Yours, etc., ACABAR. March 21, 1938.