STRIKES & MILITARY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 50, 28 February 1914, Page 9

STRIKES & MILITARY

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER (P-er Favour Of The Post.) "What is at stake in the Labour J platform is not the rate of wages, . but the continuance of free Government." Dear Mr. Massey,-— Since the date of my last' "open let- j tor" I have read, in an address delivered j recently by the philosopher-statesman, i | Mr.' A, J. Balfour, a passage that struck me ais expressing a warning Avell worthy of the attention: of the people of New Zealand. - If you have not yet seen the address, you will, 1 have no doubt, bo glad, to have the passage brought under, your notice. Here it is: "I could not have conceived that within a fortnight of my return to the House of Commons 1 should listen, as 1 did last night, to two gentlemen on the other side of the House maintaining . . . things which seemed* to me . . . absolutely destructive of the very basis on which civil society rests. I heard the sacred Avords 'freedom of speech,' 'liberty,' 'peace," and so on used and misused, so that it would almost seem ... as if those who were in favour of peace or of civilisation really thought that tho forces of the Crown were not to be brought to the support of the 'civil authorities when the civil authorities were overwhelmed by rioters. Thcso doctrines are doctriucG of lunacy:" This appeal made by Mr. Balfour to ihe House of Commons 'has, as you will see, a direct bearing upon the subject of my last letter, Sir Joseph Ward's denunciations of the Government for employing special constables in the suppression of riot and disorder in our latest strike. We have all become so familiarised with such "doctrines, of lunacy," and things have come to such a pass frith Us that one runs the risk of being regarded as a Tory arid a reactionary if one dares to protest against strikers and_ rioters being treated, not merely as innocent, but as specially privileged persons. From certain members of our Parliament of the same persuasion as the "two gentlemen" referred to by Mr. Balfour, we expect nothing better than such "doctrines of lunacy" ; but those doctrines are not by any means confined to such extremists. As you have good cause to remember, in the session of 1912, when the Waihi strike was going on, members of the "Liberal" Opposition seized every opportunity of embarrassing the Government in its efforts to suppress disorder, and there can b& no doubt that such encouragement tended to prolong the strike. Many people havo such short memories for things which do not directly affect themselves that they have already forgotten how members of the Opposition protested against the action o? the Government in sending extra police . to Waihi, although it was taken In respdn&e to an urgent petition of residents who com- , plained that the state of matters was such that they were prevened from attending to their business. One wonders how many people have' now any recol- < .lection of the efforts made by the Opposition in the interests of those strikers, who, on being convicted, had elected to go to gaol rather than give their own bond without sureties for i their good behaviour ; or of how almost all the members of the Opposition supported a motion expressing sympathy with those noble martyrs. It is only fair to Sir Joseph Ward to mention that those things happened before he i had assumed the leadership of the Opposition. What is at the bottom of. such I proceedings but those clictrlnes of lunacy which ate destructive of the very foundation on which civil society rests ! A few weeks ago we were informed by cable from Sydney that the president of the Annual Conference of Australian Workers' Unions (a body that has since lent Mr. Semple £1000 for the propagation of the Red Fed. .gospel in New Zealand) had declared that Labour must take control " of the Government, the military, and the police, 'because Labour can have no chance until it does so t Have we not all during the last few weeks been reading in the press resolutions of this kind passed by all sorts of Labour and Socialist bodies, resolutions implying that strikers and rioters, should be allowed . to commit almost any violence they please, and thafc in dealing with them the Government should never exceed the limits of peaceful persuasion? As there are so many people in this country calling themselves " Liberals " who will refuse to pay any attention to Mr. Balfour's warning ' simply because he is a Conservative, it .may be worth while quoting a pronouncement on the same subject made recently, by a niember of the Radical Asquith Ministry, who is himself a Socialist of the more rational sort. " Some members of the Labour Party," writes this statesman, "have repeatedly denounced ench a measure as the placing of soldiers at railway stations under apprehension- of their being wrecked during a railway strike. Such a precaution^ has be£n described^ as an act of intimidation towards strikers. The words are meaningless save with the implication that strikers should be free to wreck .railway stations if they wished to. ' All such reasoning is a gratuitous hindrance to a t right understanding .between Labour organisations and the general public." In England, then, we find statesmen of opposite parties justifying the employment of soldiery for the protection of property in a strike, wnilst in New Zealand we have the leader, of a party calling itself the "liberal" Party denouncing the Government for availing itself of the services of ordinary citizens who volunteer as special constables to prevent strikers from "interfering with farmers engaged in shipping their produce. Such is "Liberal" statesman' ship in New _ Zealand ! What a sorry pass for the Liberal Party and its leader to come to, after introducing, a new system oE defence against external enemies, to find themselves in the position of having to look for support to the enemies ot their country, men who advocate tho arming of the democracy for the purpose of destroying capital and overthrowing the social fabric ! I take the liberty of suggesting that, if at any future time you should find yourself in the position of having to deal with a similar crisis, you should be le&s ch.ary about using the military for the purpose of dealing with it ; if the Government made a mistake at all it was one the very opposite of that for which Sir Joseph Ward is blaming it— that, on finding the police force to be' unequal to the occasion, it did not immediately call up the permanent forces of the Crown, instead of allowing the strikers to dominate the situation until special constables could be obtained. That is .surely one of the very purposes for which they are maintained and paid. . The result is that the Leader of the Opposition is trying to have it both ways ; fear of his Syndicalist supporters, to whom he looks for assistance in turning out the Government, drove him into aclion that prolonged the strike, and now he in' playing the part, the despicable part, of seeking to gain political advantage • for himself by blaming the Government — for what? Not for failing to take the expeditious course of calling up the permanent forces, but for employing special constables instead of doing as he would have done, capitulate to the strikers and rioters! "Alas for Liberalism!" ciies i Sir John Findlay, for it has missed its

la&t chanco. "Alas for the Liberal Party T say T ; as for Liberalism, its benign spirit has fled ttom the evil spirits of [socialism, Syndicalism and Red Federationistn, and taken refuge v. ilh the Reform Party, and there it i& renewing its youth and preening its wings for further and nobler nights. — I am, etc., J. MACGUEGOR. Dtinedin, 24th February.