"A BLOW FOR LIBERTY"

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 45, 21 February 1918, Page 6

"A BLOW FOR LIBERTY"

Mr. Webb, M.P., is entitled to the sympathy of us all in the very delicate and difficult position in which he finds himself. He is anxious to serve his •country to the 'best of his ability, but circumstances over which he has no control have arisen to raise a cruel doubt as to the capacity in which his ambition can best be realised. The pathos of Mr. Webb's position is increased by the fact that the resolution of this doubt is also beyond his control. And in order that the sufferings of this.martyr to tho conflicting claims of public duties may be complete, in order that his cup of sorrow may be filled to the brim, he is confronted by the tragic discovery that while this conflict continues the uncertainty h incapacitating him itOm yot a third-sphere pj public, service/-in.^vhjicb.

he is equally anxious to share. Mr. Webb desires the electors of Wellington North " to strike a blow for liberty " by sending his. friend Mi. Holland to Parliament, but he finds that his efforts are being discounted by the unsettled problem to which we have referred. At a most unfortunate time for Mr. Webb and his friends the Government has published the correspondence which it has, had with the Blackball miners regarding the proposed exemption of Mr. Webb from military service. Mr. Webb, be it noted, is no party to the correspondence, nor has he made any claim for exemption. He must be regarded as an entirely disinterested and unbiased third party over whose irresponsive body a very pretty controversy is taking place. Yet despite his entire detachment from this interesting quarrel the Government has been mean enough to publish the correspondence for the purpose of weakening the blow for liberty which Mr. Webb and Mr. Holland are endeavouring to strike in Wellington North.

" It is absolutely cruel of the Government," said Mr. Webb yesterday, " to endeavour to damage the candidature of Mr. Holland in this way." It is cruel indeed, but what else had Mr. Holland and Mr. Webb any right to expect from a capitalistic, bourgeois, un-class-con-scious, anti-Holland, anti-Webb, and— to their sorrow and shame be it spoken anti-German Government? And though the' procedure may be cruel, something better than a question-begging epithet will be needed to establish its injustice. Did Mr. Webb desire Mr. Holland to win the election under false colours? Or does he suggest that the colours which the Blackball miners have hoisted are not really those of the candidate and his advocate? that the black flag of industrial revolt by which the miners are preparing to compensate the Germans for the advantage that the cause of freedom would derive from Mr. Webb's presence in our fighting line is not fit company for the red flag under which Mr. Holland and Mr. Webb dispense a vaguer and at times a less unseasonable doctrine? If any injustice is being done to these discreeter champions of a liberty which, if fully realised, would hand over New Zealand and the Empire as helpless victims for the same treatment as is now being meted out to the Baltic Provinces of Russia, the fault is not that of the Government which published the correspondence, but of the friends of Mr. Webb who contributed the really interesting part, and of Mr. Webb himself and Mr. Holland for refusing to disavow complicity and approval, if they are able to do so.

. Mr. Webb declares that he has not sought exemption from military service, and apparently he is willing to go. There is no suggestion that his military zeal is of an aggressive or spontaneous character. -He has not felt the call of. honour and patriotism which induced three of his fellow members—Captain Hine and Lieutenants T. E. V Seddon and Downie Stewart, and one of the most distinguished • of his colleagues in the Labour Party—the' late Sergeant E. J. Carey—to offer their services in striking the most effective blows for liberty that have been possible during the last three years and a-half. All these men felt the conflict of duties, but they settled the question for themselves and answered what they regarded as the higher call. Captain Seddon represented a West Coast constituency and a mining constituency, like Mr. Webb, but he did not go through the meaningless farce of a by-election to decide what he was simple enough to regard as a question for his own conscience. Sergeant Carey felt the conflict of duties, but when a friend urged that there were others who could be better spared, he,answered: ''That's just why I feel that I ought to go " —and he went: Mr. Webb did not go. He felt that the call to stay and preach the gospel of class-conßciousness and social strife, and hamper the operations of the true army of liberty, was the higher one, and while the la-w allowed him the option he was entitled to exercise it in this

But since Mr. Webb was called up by the- ballot the position has changed. The law now says that he must go, but after months of consideration he is still undecided whether he should obey or not. The question is too difficult for his personal decision; others must cut the knot. Mr. Webb, if we remember rightly, could not even take the responsibility of deciding on his own account to appeal to the Military Service Board. A unique "employers' appeal" was lodged on his behalf—and, we presume, notagainst his will—by his constituents, or some -of them, and dismissed. The faiee of resignation and re-election has ■been made broader by Mr. Webb's latest affair—-Wiz., "to take a vote on the question now and abide by the result." The referendum, according to the late Mr. J. A. Millar, is "the sheet anchor of the shuffler." Of Mr. Webb it may at least be said that he is multiplying the securities against a precipitate decision and the proofs of the soundness of his I democracy. But why appeal to the soldiei's in. camp? They might accept hint as a-soldier in order to keep him out of mischief in civil life. They might, on the other hand, turn him down because a man who is making as much trouble j about going into camp as all the other 100,000 put together, ought to start as a Major-General at least, and they could, not guarantee him the commission. The soldiers might again vote " No " for reasons less flattering to Mr. Webb. Clearly the soldiers' vote, however it went, would ' be so open to 1 misconstruction that a- byelection or two, and a Royal Commission, with perhaps a right of appeal to the Germans on Somes Island, might be needed to-arrive at an absolutely correct and authoritative decision;, and by that time the war might be over. i

All these tactics of the man who is so eager to strike a blow for liberty are indeed broad farce. The serious side of the business for the electors is his indignation over the publication of the Blackball correspondence, combined -with the failure o£ either himself or his candidate to disnvijw tlio threat of t-ho miner* " Immediate industrial revolt. Js what the,.

miners threaten if the law is allowed to take its course and Mr. Webb goes into camp. Do Mr. Webb and Mr. Holland approve of this course? Or do they condemn it? And, in either case, why do they conceal their opinions? "Personally," said Mr. Holland yesterday, with a noble condescension which the electors of Wellington North should not overlook, "I think the King is a fairly decent sort of person, but he doesn't come into this fight at all." Personally, we think Mr. Webb a fairly decent sort of person, but he does not come, eagerly into the one fight that really matters, and the electors have a,,right to know whether he and his-party are prepared to precipitate a disastrous industrial struggle in order to keep him out of it. *