ENEMIES OF STATE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 32, 7 February 1940, Page 8

ENEMIES OF STATE

MR. SEMPLE'S LASH

"STALIN GLORIFIED"

■f L '£By Telegraph—Press Association.) ? CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. The disruptive sections of the community whose activities were designed to retard New Zealand's war effort came under the lash of the Minister of Public Works (the Hon. R. Semple) .today. He described them as a conglomeration of political enemies of the State, Communists, pacifists, and as direct agents of foreign Powers.

"I can understand the honest and sincere pacifist who objects to war on religious grounds/ said Mr. Semple, "but I cannot understand him associating himself with other sections which adopt the guise of pacifism and at the same time glorify the Red murderer Stalin.

"Stalin's invasion of Finland is glorified by these people, who are preaching pacifism in New Zealand. That means that they are glorifying aggression and the murder of innocent women and children. These people, so they say, object to New Zealand doing anything to assist in the defence of the life and liberty of the people of the British Commonwealth, and in their publications they hold Stalin, the international murderer, up as mankind's saviour.

"I have offered to find the fare of one of the Communist leaders to go to Russia and carry on propaganda against the actions of the rulers. So far there has been no response.- They know their doom would be sealed as soon as they opened their mouths. When the people of this country tire of the Government they can rid themselves of it at the proper time by constitutional means. That is the principle of liberty that is at stake today. "Who are these people that are setting themselves up as an anti-war organisation?" , asked the Minister. I believe that all the people of all the nations, with the exception of the two dictators', who have blood-thirsty dreams of world conquest, are antiwar. I have opposed war all my lite, but I have never subscribed to the belief that one must bare his chest submissively to the bayonet of an invader who will take his life and the liberty of the children who will come after him. That is the issue today. Let no one forget it!"