WAKING UP TO THE DANGER

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 11

WAKING UP TO THE DANGER

DISCUSSIONS ABOUT COMMUNISM.

The Welfare League writes : —

It is said that John Bull is a lethargic individual who takes a lot of prodding before he fully wakes up. His sons oversea are much the same. We let troubles increase and multiply, and when warned of danger our people are disposed to regard those who give the warning as mere scaremongers and somewhat of a nuisance. At the close of the Great War in 1918 there came into existence in various parts of the Empire leagues and societies, similar to our Mew Zealand Welfare League, which sought to rouse the public mind to a sense of the danger existing in the direction of revolutionary plots against Great Britain and Western civilisation. For years the work of enlightenment has gone on, but those engaged in it have been regarded as "seeing bogeys."

It has been repeated over and over again that "British people are far,too sane to ever take up with Communism or revolution." So we have had a littlemore sleep, a little more folding of hands, while all the while the enemy within o.ur gates has been busy in planning for "the day"; laying mines .of sophistry and .intrigue and widely fomenting 'the spirit of class hatred, supplemented by anti-national disloyalty. Industrial unrest J2as been made the means on numerous occasions of inculcating revolutionary Socialist and Communist ideas until the mass in many leading industries have been moulded to a course of thought which makes the workers the easy prey of violent and cunning revolutionary agitators.

We have witnessed the key industries of coal supplies, shipping, andother transport brought to the stages where national safety became of the most, serious consideration, and where Britain, our Motherland, has appeared to bo almost on the verge of a catyclysmic upheaval. Time to wake up! Surely it is time, when the fanaticism of revolution is being preached with the fervour of a mad mullah from hundreds upon hundreds of platforms, journals, and, enthusiasts throughout tho Empire. It is no longer tho thoughtless harebrained bellowing of Hyde Park or Yarra Bank oratory we have to regard, but the cold, deliberately-planned machination of educated men who have set out to desttoy capitalism, the British Empire, existing institutions of Government, and to .substitute a class tyranny which they name Socialism or Sovietism. Of recent times we have seen the leading papers waken to the fact that Communism ia more than an academic question. The "Morning Post", treats the matter as a present evil to be constantly combated by every lawful means available. Other great journals recognise the danger as a national one, whilst some write in the strain that the risks is much exaggerated. It is thesght compelling to find "The Times" expressing itself in this manner: —

The Labour Party, it says, is inclined to regard the British Communists as a negligible, unimportant faction numbering 5000, and therefore beneath contempt; but, according to Lenin's 1918 estimate, only 60,000 Russian Communists disrupted n

nation of a hundred and fifty millions.

That is indeed a sign of waking up. Jn New Zealand, where journalism w generally advanced, we find daily papers still rubbing their eyes and writing as if Communism and militant Socialism were but debating society problems, although most papers are awake to the. dangers that loom before us. Discussions are taking place on the data of what is the numerical strength of tho Communist parties. Such discussions, however, fall short of recognising what is really involved, because the strength of the Official Communist Party is only one factor and not the moat important. Besides the Communist Party there is the Socialist movement, which, on Marxian lines, is a seed-bed for the propagation of Communist ideas. There are Labour colleges, the Plebs League, proletarian Sunday schools; some ?0 journals—all Communistic. Then there exists what is known as the National Minority Movement,- which is forging ahead in the large trade unions and is a Communist movement. In addition to these there are inside the trades and labour councils, the trade unions, the Trade- Union Congress, and the political Labour Party nuclei of Communists actively at work. There are the many sympathisers with phases of the Communist movement who do not claim i to be Communists and even repudiate i the name. It can be said, indeed with truth, that there are vastly more supporters of the movement towards Communism outside the party than there are in it. This should be held in mind, that the Communist Party, by direction of the heads in Moscow, aims not at a large membership, but the reverse. Its plan is to have a restricted membership by highly disciplined individuals. The party aims at revolution by using tho industrial, social, and military forces already existent, and the test of its progression is to what extent are its members permeating these forces. Full wakefulness is required to watch the progress of that permeation and to

check it whenever possible. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Only by tho exercise of such vigilance c:iu revolution be prevented.