“PATH TO POWER”

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10377, 7 April 1927, Page 6

“PATH TO POWER”

ALLEGED SEDITIOUS BOOK.

■PROSECUTION FOR SALE.

UNDER WAR REGULATIONS

AUCKLAND, April 6. A charge of selling a document, ‘‘The Path to Power," which encourages violence and lawlessness, contrary to the War Regulations Continuance Act, was preterred against a waterside worker, Walter Hodgson, at the Police Court this morning. Mr Paterson, who prosecuted, said that the book did not openly advocate lawlessness and violence, but it diet so insidiously and perniciously. The scheme of the hook dealt with the Parliamentary action and tneconstitutional methods of the Tabor party The book considered that they would never get things done by these methods, and urged the work-ers-to prepare for class war. It was alleged that the book had a seditious intention. A copy oi the book was bought by Detective Robertson at the Communists 5 meeting. It was significant that the opening paragraph referred to the aims of the Communist party, as assisting the workers in the struggle to overthrow the landlord and the capitalist class. It also advocated that tlie workers should use force to achieve thenMr. Learv, for the defence, submitted that “The Path to Power * was merely a pamphlet of industrial and domestic discussion, and that tins sort of thing was not considered when the war regulations were passed, the last legislation is now seven years old. continued Mr. Leary, and the economic position that has arisen since the war does not matter now, so far as the war regulations are concerned. They have nothing to do with war. I submit that our own subjects are entitled to discuss strikes, lock-outs, etc., in the same way as they did before the war. U every temperately and well expressed argument put forward, by the Communist party lor Labor party is to be a subject of persecution by the Crown, it will mean that the only vehicle of expression and education left will be secret discussion by the most abandoned criminals burning with a desire to break the back ot society. Mr. Learv said that the general purport ot the book went no further than to suggest that a general strike, of course accompanied with its attendant inconveniences, was the only way to emancipation. There is no revolutionary situation anvwhere in the hook, where bloodshed is advocated. I he. book is meielv a reference to the economic crisis. '.Such discussions were never contemplated by the Act. The Magistrate reserved decision.— P.A. °