NATIONAL UNITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 112, 13 May 1940, Page 15

NATIONAL UNITY

DISSENTIENTS CONDEMNED

"Any person who sows, or attempts to sow, seeds of class hatred and civil discord should be denounced for having sucn a degrading conception of his private and public duty,." said the Chancellor cf the University of New Zealand, the Hon: J. A. Hanan, M.L.C., in the course of his address at the. Canterbury College capping ceremony. In an impressive appeal for national unity during the war, Mr. Hanan said there was an obligation, that should be shared by all, to discard political prejudices,, theories, and dissension. Unity in action, unswerving will, and resolution in co-operating with, and supporting, in the common interest, the other parts of the British. Commonwealth of Nations and their Ally, freedom-loving France, was a bounden duty. By team work, and meeting military and economic requirements, a material service could be done in fulfilling the hopes of the democracies for a final victory, whatever reverses might lie in the. way. ■

"I regret to hear that there are those in-this Dominion who are so callous or so indifferent as to what is at stake in this war that they think it no shame to endeavour, by obstructive tactics, to embarrass, weaken, and undermine the Government's muchneeded, vigorous war efforts to marshal its' resources behind the will of our country, and help Great Britain in winning the war," continued Mr. Hanan. "National service is imperative if we are to measure up to our heavy responsibilities, Now that the position is so grave obstruction to providing means essential to give Great Britain our maximum support in the war is nothing but insidious anarchy, even if it be not open or avowed."

There were' some malcontents who would stab at the heart those constitutional principles and privileges of British citizenship which they claimed gave them the right to disseminate their poisonous propaganda. Those/ ungrateful citizens, with their foreign "isms" and destructive virus containing the germs of dictatorship and totalitarianism reminded him of the dangerous little infestation which lived in the blood of a strong, healthy animal, and at the same time lowered its vitality and threatened its existence, Mr.

Hanan said. Th^e objective of those disloyal agitators; with ;their subversive propaganda, was to abolish our constitutional form of government, and in its stead create a detestable oligarchy such as obtained under the regime. of Bolshevik Russia, where the people had little real semblance of freedom, but a tyranny for mechanising human life, deifying the State, and defying;th,e moral and spiritual'forces lof the world.