WORDS AND MEANINGS.

Evening Star, Issue 19699, 28 October 1927, Page 4

WORDS AND MEANINGS.

Tub fondness of some sections of Labor for impressive words was amusingly illustrated at the meeting of Auckland unionists to consider the new Arbitration Bill reported iu our issue of yesterday. A stickler for the old idea of saying what one means—no more—protested against the use of ills terra “ sabotage ” in a statement that if the measure were passed “ there would be no alternative to the workers falling back upon the direct action of the strike, the boycott, and sabotage.” The unionists of this country, he pointed out, bad not yet decided that the last-mentioned weapon was one they were going to use, and in the circumstances the meeting had no right to threaten it. The workers of New Zealand, to their credit, never have used the weapon, and we think too well of them to believe that they will ever use it. It is an ugly name, the name of an ugly practice, which we have imported from the French, and it is doubtful if more than a proportion of those who were present at the Auckland meeting had any exact sense of its meaning. To resort to sabotage, in the first instance, meant to employ the wooden boot, and there are no wooden boots in New Zealand. Then the phrase had its meaning extended to express destructiveness of a very special, and it may be said peculiarly un-British, kind Those who make sabotage their weapon do not go on strike, but they take particular care that the gear shall not engage, the switches shall not lock, the wheels shall not run truly, the nuts shall always bo loose at the critical moment when life or death is dependent upon their tightness. Mr Bloodworth explained that in the Auckland report “ the word was merely used as a term.” His implication apparently was that it was not required that it should have any precise meaning, so long as it had a fine, intimidating sound. We are reminded of Alice in Looking-glass Land.

“There’s glory lor you.” said Humpty Dumpty. “ 1 don’t know what you mean tv * glory,’ ” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled coiitemptuously. “ Of, course, you don’t—till I toll you. 1 meant: ‘There’s a nice knockdown argument lor you,’ ” “ But ‘ glory ’ doesn’t mean a nice knockdown argument, Alice objected. , ~ , T , “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less. “ The question is,’ said Alice, “whether you.can make words moan so many different things.’ • “ The question is, said Humptv Dumpty. “ which is to be mastei—that’s all.”

Humpty Dumpty used “ impenetxability ” to mean that “ we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would ba just as well if you’d mention what yon mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean bo stop here all the rest ol your life.” The Auckland meeting might have found a single word, after frTm game fashion, to express its de-

scription of tho new Bill as “the mostsmashing and vicious blow to unionism over attempted in any country.” If it had called it “alimentation” there would have been less obvious absurdity in its description of proposals in themselves just about as moderate as any which tho Government could have brought down if tho Arbitration Act was to be amended by it at all.