Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1918. LIBERTY OR KAISERISM?

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 49, 26 February 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1918. LIBERTY OR KAISERISM?

The charge has been frequently made, and truthfully made, against some of the candidates and their supporters that they do not know that there is a, war on. But the charge must not be made without qualification against the ■ candidate who addressed the large meeting in the Town Hall last night, or against the colleagues who supported him on the platform, or against the audience which cheered him and them. Everyone of them, from Mr. Holland downwards, seemed to be keenly alive to the fact that there is a war on, but the war which fills their thoughts and arouses their enthusiasm is the eternal class war which claimed their energies while the Empire was still at peace. That is the only war that really counts in. their estimation, the only war that should govern the votes o. free men at tho ballot on Thursday next. It was, of course, impossible to exclude entirely the consideration of that colossal struggle upon which the rights and liberties of the whole world, including even the right of the New Zealand Socialists to preach the gospel of " class consciousness " and class hatred, depend. The opponents of this hateful gospel, the critics who, like ourselves, have ventured to urge the claims of Empire-conscious-ness as entitled to priority over those of class-consciousness at the present time, had made it inevitable that this other war should obtrude itself at revolutionary Socialism's high' festival of hate. But the unwelcome and unbidden guest was not there to receive a single word of sympathy or encouragement. Men who are foolish enough to die that Mr. Holland may live to pursue his crusade against the State and the Empire which they wore proud to serve, must not expect any gratitude from him. The chief merit, of their sacrifice in his eyes appears to be that it has so prolonged the struggle against the most terrible of tyrannies that war-weariness makes faint hearts and unthinking minds more accessible to the. teachings of discontent and destruction than they were before.

With our own share in tho attentions of the various speakers at the Town Hall we have every reason to be satis- | fied. Abuse is the favourite resort of a I disputant who is gravelled for lack of j argument, and we received this form of j I compliment in abundant measure. Mr. I Holland would indeed have done botter if he had confined himself to a kind of criticism, in which we cannot attempt to compete with him, for his attempts at argument have only sunk him deeper- in I the mire. He repeated tho triumphant dialectics by which he had , previously poured confusion upon those who had described him as a pacifist and a revolutionary Socialist. He indignantly repudiated the parallel which we drew between his doctrine and those of the Bolsheviks, and he did it so effectively as almost to persuade us to apologise—to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks' says Mr. Holland, have never been pacifists, for they have always declared their readiness to fight in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, some of Mr. Holland's critics have been calling him a Bolshevik. Can. a more cruel injustice be imagined? Yet j the only party to the comparison who has the right to complain of injustice is, on Mr. Holland's own showing, the 80l- j shevik. ■ c The lunacy of the Bolsheviks had hitherto appeared to mark the limit of human unreason, but it is Mr. Holland's proud boast that he can go one better. By the cashiering of officers, the dissolution of every bond of discipline, the utter demoralisation of the navy, and the ultimate withdrawal and demobilisation of army after army, the Bolsheviks carried out the pacifist gospel in a, manner which apparently Mr. Holland can heartily approve. But when they are fired by a human resentment as the invader captures city after city and threatens the ruin of every national hope and the exposure of women and children to all the horrors of Belgium's martyrdom, and begin to feel for the arms which the madness that Mr. Holland approves has put out! of their reach, they are yielding to a human weakness against which the adamantine bosom is proof. Ho is a pacifist, but they are not. Their lunacy has its lucid intervals, but his has not, and our apologies are due to those whom our overlooking of so vital a distinction has libelled. After this severe rebuff we hesitate to find our own terms for the Holland gospel as we now understand it. ■Wo prefer to borrow a few words from an English authority who, speaking in November last and to a London audience, was assuredly riot, biased by any of the side-issues of the Wellington North election:— " Ho wanted to sound a strong note of warning against the pacifists in our midst. Wo had seen what they had accomplished in lliissia, and were endeavouring to accomplish in Italy. ' Pacifist' was only another namo for ' murderer.' By their methods they were causing the death of hundreds, of thousands who wore fighting at the front. He hated war and militarism, but this war must bo fought and won." (____ It was Mr. Ben Tillett, M.P., who spoke these words, and even Mr. Holland will concede that we have hero an authority ns free from capitalistic sympathies as himself, who impugns still further the

accuracy of the parallel which we were rash enough to draw.

It would be easy to multiply testimonies of the same kind from the ranks of British Labour, for if British Labour had not loathed the doctrines of Mr. Holland as fiercely as they loathe the German autocracy to which the acceptance of such doctrines would enslave us, the British Empire would have gone under long ago. This is how Mr. ■Will Crooks, M.P., "democrat, worker for peace, and advocate of international amity," regards a war which to Mr. Holland is merely a capitalists' war, and an enemy whom he is prepared to treat—let us speak by the book this time —with even greater complaisance than that displayed by the Bolsheviks;—

" The great thing that concerns us now," says Mr. Crooks, "is the war. Thi9 is a fight to the finish, and the Kaiser has fotto be finished. This war is everybody's usiness, workman and aristocrat alike. Everybody must help, and every class_ is helping. We aro going to see this thing through. And we are willing to sacrifice everything. ... I recall the words of the King when, as Prince of Wales, he attended a great gathering at the Guildhall after his journey round the Dominions. ' Wherever we went the people's hearts swelled with pride at their co-partnership in this great Empire.' We have no lands, no possessions, and yet we ' all share its common heritage of freedom. And it is that common heritage which is at stake. Liberty or Kaiserism? I am for liberty?"

"Liberty or Kaiserism?" says Mr. Will Crooks; "I am for liberty!" '' Liberty or Kaiserism? We are for Kaiserism!" was the doctrine advocaited in effect at the Town Hall last night. The people of New .Zealand prefer to take their stand by Mr. Will Crooks and the King whom he so- aptly quotes—the King at whom Mr. Holland so characteristically sneers; and there would not be the remotest chance of. the electors appearing to prefer Mr. Holland and the Kaiser if it were not for the confusion of issues and the splitting of votes. Mr. Holland's aim is to get New Zealand out of the war by killing the Government. As Mr. Brandon said last night, the way to win the war is to support the Government. " The disruption of the National Government would be one of the greatest misfortunes that could happen to the Dominion," says the very man whose candidature by disrupting the Government forces in Wellington North is threatening the country with this misfortune. If the electors will follow Mr. Brandon's precept, rather than his practice, the misfortune will be averted.