Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAT 3, 1932. STRIFE AND BITTERNESS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 103, 3 May 1932, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAT 3, 1932. STRIFE AND BITTERNESS

Throughout Europe the May Day celebrations are reported lo have passed "practically without incident," and'the same phrase without the, qualifying "practically" is applied by a Tokio message lo the nonEuropean capital where trouble was ' probably, as likely as anywhere else. The tranquillity of Europe may be inferred from the fact that the success of, a thousand London Communists in holding up the traffic for an hour in an attempt'to organise a hostile demonstration outside the JapanesevEmbassy is mentioned as one of the few disturbances. On this side of.the world also the day passed'almost in peace, the most serious exception being the clash between Trades Hall and Communist processions in Melbourne, which resulted in injuries to the Acting-Premier of Victoria arid other Labour leaders. In Wellington a drenching southerly wind took most of the spirit out of the very, Red demonstration at the Basin' Reserve, and in other parts of the.Dominion where the police,did not receive the same help they did not need it. In Ghristchurcb. especially the perfect orderliness of the larger: demonstration reflects equal credit upon the .unostentatious • precautions of the police and the spirit of the demonstrators themselves. As we mentioned yesterday, Wellington appears to have enjoyed another distinction. . Nothing was said in Wellington of Labour's very latest move for turning the Government out of office—the. simplest and at the same time most" brilliant and most efficacious device that ever entered the mind of a political genius, but it was freely announced in other places. . In Parliament the Labour Party has exhausted all its resources of obstruction and invective and of both real and simulated fury in opposition to substantially the whole of the policy that, the Government, with the approval of a large majority of the people and of a House of Representatives elected for that express purpose, has devised for balancing the Budget and averting the disastec of repudiation and collapse. There is no discredit in defeat, but the tactics by which the Labour Party has endeavoured to avert it have undoubtedly brought discredit both upon the party itself and upon Parliament This discreditable failure it now proposes to reverse by a procedure which presumably it regards -as an appeal to', the people, but which is quite unknown to the constitution, arid in form will apparently be an appeal to the Government According to the statement of Mr. McKeen, M;P., which was telegraphed from Blenheim yesterday,

a petition calling on the Government to resign, on account of its alleged mismanagement of the unemployment situation ana on other grounds, would be circulated all over New Zealand this week.

The other grounds, or some of them, were mentioned in the resolution passed by Mr. Semple, M.P.'s, meeting at Invercargill, whereby it was declared that

we citizens of Invercargill pledge ourselves to do all in our power to supporj the petition calling upon the Government to repeal the legislation relating to cuts in pensions, wages, salaries, and hospital and education payments and to resign.

From these and other references to the effect of the petition as "calling upon the Government to resign" it may be. inferred that the Labour Party'is not following the lead of the New" Guard in New South Wales and 'appealing to the GovernorCeneral' to dismiss the Government or to send it to the country for judgment on its high crimes and misdemeanours. "Calling upon the Government to s resign" must surely mean an appeal to the Government itself, an appeal .without any constitutional power behind it to do the right thing from the Labour standpoint, to reverse all the legislation that they were elected to prepare and with infinite trouble have succeeded in getting. passed, and to make way for the Labour Government against which the electors | firmly set their faces less than six months ago. It is really an appeal to the consciences of' Mr. Forbes and his colleagues that Mr. H. E. Holland is making, just as' a fortnight ago he was appealing to the consciences of the Auckland rioters. On that occasion he warned window-smashers and the looters that they had been doing "something that is altogether unjustified," and would

only provide material for would-be dictators in our time to have recourse to far more drastic measures than they would otherwise think of doing.

The Labour leader's prophecy has been fulfilled. The "would-be die- ' tators" have become more op.gressive

than before. They have stiffened up tlie precautions against rioling and window-smashing and looting in a drastic fashion which reveals the incurable bias of a capitalistic Government in favour of law and order. Mr. Holland may think that the larger measure of public safety which the Dominion has enjoyed since the Auckland riot is due to his own singularly feeble moral appeal and not to the legislation of the Government, and he is of course entitled to his own opinion. It is, however, not specifically on the ground of this great public service that he is how making--his appeal to the "would-b§ dictators" and. supporting, it with something more like a big stick than his agreement in the other case.

It is indeed on its measures not •for the public safety but for the public solvency that the proposed appeal to the Government is to be based, and the promoters of the appeal are hoping to get for it a moral weight in which their own protests, are. en-tirely-lacking by getting it extensively signed. ' But this very matter of the public solvency was the dominant issue at. the General Election; it was for this that the Government was given' a free hand and a large majority; it is for this that with that majority's approval 'the Government has provided; and it is ludicrous for the minority which has been defeat; ed both at the polls and in the House to seek to reverse the constitutional result by an irregular and entirely unconvincing procedure. There is another absurdity in the petition if its form is, correctly represented in the references made to it in all.the resolutions on the subject that we have seen. According lo the fullest of 'these references the Government will be called upon

to repeal the legislation relating to cuts in pensions, wages, salaries, and hospital and education paymonts, and to resign.

That Mr. Forbes and his colleagues should be asked to repeal all the legislation they have so laboriously passed, and, after they have thus purged their sins, to resign and give Labour a free run, is a delightful stroke of humour. Yet the whole mqtter cannot be dismissed as a mere joke. Politically it must be futile, constructively and socially it must be worse than futile. Whatever energy is thrown into the movement will tend to promote strife and suspicion and bitterness at the very time when the Parliamentary recess gives an opportunity and a call for the stimulation and consolidation of all public and private effort, regardless of any distinctions of class or politics, for the alleviation of a cjuel and steadily spreading malady.