Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1918. LOYALTY

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 50, 27 February 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1918. LOYALTY

Last night's meeting in the Town Hall served two valuable purposes. While Mr. Holland was proclaiming at another meeting that the kind of Labour he represents stands for all that is historically best in British freedom, a section of his supporters wern displaying their appreciation of British traditions by doing their best to prevent the two leaders of tl\e National Government from getting a hearing. The essence of the Prussianism which Mr. Holland professes to find in his political opponents, but to which he is prepared to truckle when it takes the field in arms against the liberties of the world, is its antagonism to freedom. The rights of public meeting and free speech are things unknown in Prussia even in time of peace, and fair play to an opponent is a virtue which finds no place in the Prussian Kultur. Mr. Holland's supporters were therefore showing their sympathy with all that is historically best in Prussianism when they endeavoured to howl down the Prime Minister and hia colleague.- They made it perfectly plain that it is not the lack of will, but only the lack of opportunity, that prevents them from playing the tyrant and suppressing with a Prussian thoroughness every idea that runs counter to their own, and the electors of Wellington North are not likely to overlook the point. It is for the supporters of Mr. Brandon in particular to take the lesson to heart. We may safely say that they were not among the disturbers of .the peace] at the Town Hall, and that they are entirely out of sympathy with such contemptible tactics. But it is into the hands of these forces of disorder and tyranny and hatred that they are playing by dividing the patriotic vote at a time when, according to their own admission, the' call for unity is more urgent than it ever was before. Of a brighter significance was the presence of Sir Joseph Ward on the platform, and the unequivocal and hearty support which he gave to Mr. Luke's candidature. In accordance with the party compact which is the charter of the National Government, he had previously endorsed the nomination which it fell to Mr. to make, but his speech last night showed that he' was not content with a formal and perfunctory discharge of the obligation. Though Mr. Luke is not of his party, Sir Joseph Ward pleaded just as strongly for him as though he was. The Liberal leader refused to believe that the' Liberals of Wellington wanted to break the* agreement on which the National Government was based. We believe that Sir Joseph Ward's confidence in his party is on the whole well placed, but there is a sufficient minority of doubters to make his appeal of great value to the candidature of Mr. Luke. The doctrine of dishonour had been openly preached to the Liberals of Wellington ftorth, and had not been previously repudiated. On the 19th inst. the. New Zealand Times dealt with the matter as follows :— , " The Liberals arc looking on with considerablo interest. • Their loader haa, by accepting the nomination of the leader of tho Reform Party, observed the compact of tho party truce. The fact does not bind them to vdto for the nominated cajididate. The utmost that can be said is that they can vote for him if they please." We do not know whether the ethics or the logic of this astonishing argument is the more to be admired. The compact which Sir Joseph Ward signed, not as a private citizen or-as an elector of Awarua, but as the leader of the Liberal Party of New Zealand, is to be regarded as binding on him personally but on nobody else. We need not waste words on such wretched sophistry. The German method of treating inconvenient scraps of paper is really preferable to this. Germany's pleas for her violation of the Belgian treaty have included some conspicuous triumphs of hardihood and ingenuity, but nothing quite so brilliant as the contention that the treaty was binding on the Bulow who signed it, but that the utmost that could be said for the rest of the nation was that it left them free to observe it if they pleased. Sir Joseph Ward does not hold the plighted word of a Liberal leader quite so. cheap, and we believe that his standard of honour will bo Approved by th«. Liberala in the constituency,

SUPREME NEED FOR UNITY In addition to the two points mentioned in the preceding article, last night's meeting in the Town Hall emphasised the nature of the issue and the supreme need for unity. The Chairman (Mr. John Hutcheson) struck the ■ keynote when he said he supported Mr. Luke because Mr. Luke stood for the National Government; and that he supported the National Government because it stood for New Zealand and the Empire. It was characteristic of the spirit of the partiBans of the Red Federation that their first outburst of opposition was produced by Mr. Hutcheson's next statement—viz., that he stood for the crushing of Germany. The bulwark of liberty is to be preserved even from verbal attack in this country if the lungs of the irresponsibles are strong enough to do it. The only Imperialism. they are prepared to attack themselves is that of the British Empire which has carried liberty and justice all round the globe, and amid a world in ruins is still their most powerful defender. As we point out in another article, even the German Socialists are shuddering at the way in which the Bolsheviks, by their ignominious surrender, " have strengthened German Imperialism and made an effective fight against it, more difficult." But Mr. Holland's only criticism of the Bolsheviks is that they are not so consistent and thoroughgoing in their pacifism as he. An infamy which -the Russian revolutionaries have taken nearly a year to consummate Mr. Holland would have put through in the twinkling of an eye. " The destruction of German Imperialism " —the very thing which brought down upon Mr. Hutcheson the hoots of the irresponsibles last night—ha^ been declared by tho Belgian Socialists to be one of their indispensable objects. They deny that this is a "simple bourgeois quarrel which ought to leave the proletariat indifferent." Had Belgian Socialism, said its representatives at Stockholm in August last, " abandoned the struggle under the pretence that the soldiers of William 11. were too powerful, it would have been dishonoured in its own eyes. It has never reckoned cowardice amongst revolutionary virtues." Not so have Mr. Holland, Mr. Webb, and the disturbers at the Town Hall last night learned the revolutionary virtues. Callousness to human suffering and the meek submission of the British Empire to the treatment which Belgium and Russia are now undergoing at the hands of the most brutal despotism that the world ever saw are some of the virtues which these champions of humanity and frees dom ask the electors to approve at the ballot-box. It would be interesting to know what in his heart of hearts Mr. Brandon really feels at the prospect that this appeal may be successful. If he had stayed out of the contest, the victory of the Government, whose defeat he says would be " one of the greatest misfortunes that could happen to. the Dominion," would be assured. But Mr. Brandon's candidature not only imperils the National Government and the vigorous prosecution of the war, but practically every other of his political and social ideals. It gives a chance to influences, which he regards as poisonous even in time of peace, and which in time of war, and at such a crisis as the war has now reached, he doubtless regards as not less dangerous than German tyranny itself. Yet Mr. Brandon is risking the triumph of domestic revolutionary forces co-ope-rating with a foreign military despotism —precisely the same combination which has laid Russia in the dust and prolonged indefinitely the horrors of the war—and for what? Mr. Brandon is exposing his country to this risk under the influence of resentment at the vi'ay in which the Government's candidate has been selected, and a dislike of the social views with .which that candidate is associated. As Mr. Brandon insists that these views are irrelevant to the issue, the logical grounds of his candidature are narrowed to. the first, and it is for him to consider whether this small difference from a Government which he supports on every point justifies the course that he is taking. If at the eleventh hour Mr. Brandon will allow patriotism to reassert its normal superiority in Sis- mind over personal considerations, it is not too late to avert a result which would be a misfortune to the country and a lifelpng regret to himself. He has made his protest against what he calls "boss rule," but he surely does not prefer a Red Federation boss to the mild rule of Mr. Massey and the lawful authority of the National Government he is pledged to support. The Republican bosses in America are taking their orders to-day from a Democratic President. The leader of the New Zealand Liberals declared in emphatic terms last night for the Reform candidate in Wellington North. Yet Mr. Brandon—a Reformer, a supporter of the National Government, and a patriot —is risking all the great causes that he has at heart at the' dictation ; of a small, if natural, grievance which has just as naturally degenerated into something like personal pique. It is still open to Mr. Brandon's patriotism to avert the misfortune which his persistence in his candidatxire will render possible.