POLITICAL ISSUES.

Evening Star, Issue 23817, 22 February 1941, Page 15

POLITICAL ISSUES.

To THE EDITOR. Sir,—ln reply to your leader, ‘Politics! Issues.’ first, let me "draw the attention of your loaders to Senator Reynolds’s cabled comments in the same paper on " wealthy industrialists and landowners throughout the Empire.” Our late Prime Minister, tha Hon. M ,1. Savage, on more than one occasion declared himself a Socialist, and said that he would never run away from tha consequences, and when the present war broke out he further declared that if the Government had to resort to conscription there would be conscription of wealth as well as man power. At this stage I wish to remand you that in the columns of the ‘ Star ’ on many occasions it has been stated that this is a war for the preservation of democracy. During the previous World War we were told that it was a " war to make the world safe for democracy,’ and presumably you would have us believe that for the time being that was accomplished. If anybody should want tha writ cr’s opinion I would have no hesitation in saying that it made the world safe for the people Senator Reynolds refers to. In case the Hon. Loader of the National Party and Press editors don't happen to know, let me inform you all that this happens to be a working-class war to an extent never previously experienced in history. The incentive to the worker in the prosecution of this war is the preservation of the Labour Movement, and the best type of “ fifth columnist ” that Hitler can have in New Zealand or anywhere else in the Empire is the politician or Press editor who insists on retarding the progress of Socialism.—l am, etc., James Bair. February 21. [The preservation of democracy docs not require a simultaneous war for Socialism, which in practice easily becomes autocracy. It requires the suspension of all other conflicts. Senator Reynolds talked like a Socialist, and at the same time announced that he would vote against the Aid to Britain Bill. —Ed E.S.]