The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1940, FOREIGN POLITICAL POISON

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 87, 6 January 1940, Page 10

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1940, FOREIGN POLITICAL POISON

Mr. Arthur Greenwood, Deputy-Leader of the British Labour Party, has resigned the presidency of the University Labour federation, and severed his connexion with it. A conference of that body adopted a resolution declaring that the task of the Labour movement is to lead the working class in a determined struggle against what it describes as a war for profits and world domination for which it holds “Hitlerism, Fascism, and and French Imperialism” equally responsible.. Mr. Greenwood s comment on the resolution is that it is “obviously inspired from Communist sources.” A resolution very similar to this was adopted by the West Coast Trades and Labour Council recently. These manifestations of Communist activities in our own country as well as in other parts of the British Empire should be taken very seriously. The United States Government is much more alert to the menace of the subversive activities and the subtle effects of the foreign political poison which is permeating practically every country in the world under the auspices of either Russian Communism or German Nazism. Reference was made in these columns yesterday to a finding of the Dies Federal Commission of Inquiry into the “un-American activities” of alien propagandists that “the Communist Party of the United States is a foreign conspiracy masked as a political party.” Does the New Zealand public realize that the same kind of thing is happening in their own country? Does it realize the activities of Communist propagandists are not confined to the infesting of our industrial unions with their pernicious and destructive ideas, but are ramifying in various “intellectual” circles throughout the community ? With many of these so-called “intellectuals” this embracing of foreign political philosophies of one kind and another is no doubt prompted by the desire to pose as “advanced thinkers.” They decry the old order in Britain as out-moded and effete, and profess to see in this or that political “ism” of foreign extraction the vision and ultimate substance of an ideal world. Residing in a British country, and enjoying the benefits and privileges of existence under free political institutions, freedom of speech, criticism, and action, they bite the hands that feed them. How many of them would exchange these conditions forthose obtaining in Communist Russia or Nazi Geimany, the countries on whose political system they expend so much fiothy unintelligent argument? Consider the lot of the inhabitants of these countries. They have no freedom of speech. Io criticize the Goveminent is treason, punishable with death or the tortuics of concentiation camps. Spies-are everywhere, tapping domestic telephones, listen-ing-in to conversations, and even fabricating accusations of treason against perfectly innocent people. The people in these countries are governed by a dictator clique that is answerable for its policy and actions to none. It is beyond the power of the people to protest, or change their Government. Yet, incredible as it may seem, there are people in our own country who are credulous enough to accept-the gospels preached by the evangelists of these systems. If they have not completely lost the power of thinking for themselves in wandering about the maze of these latterday ideological and economic theories, surely reflection would show them that the evils of these tyrannical systems of government aic enough to condemn them at once as utterly opposed to our British tradition of freedom and justice. But there is the fact. To .repeat the phrase adapted from President Roosevelt’s remarks on the subject yesterday: Right throughout this country are to be found “apologists for foreign aggressors and “partisan groups who wrap themselves up in the false mantle of New Zealand democracy to promote their own economic, financial, or political advantage.” Let there be no mistake. These subversive movements are nothing else than are so uncompromisingly described by the United States Federal Commission: foreign conspiracies masked as political parties.