ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 18 September 1924, Page 4

ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION

(To the Editor). Sir,—-Cr. Reid’s remark on the above at the Council meeting on Monday that "the whole idea was futile” gladdens my heart. 1 feel that it is a credit to riawera that we have, on our local Council such a stalwart, one, 1 might''' say, after my own heart. None of your molly-coddle, nainby pambyism for. us Give us —1 mean Cr. Reid and myself—tne good cld; times, the times when peopie could slaughter.each other without these sentimentalists holding up their hands in holy horror. The present times, ate too soft. We want more Cr. Reids on ohr local bodies,; ahd 1 1^ venture to say there would, be tever 91 these anti-war gentlemen with their' impossible demands for the use of our parks to air their views. Our Park will soon he like Hyde Park in London ' it things go on as they are now shap--IU.S.* am told that this is a worldwide movement,, and that on . next Sunday m every civilised country in the. world similar demonstrations will -be held. W hdt doas Hawera ate on the outskirts of civil-, isatioii, and it- will be time enough te consider these things' when the filll current of civilisation sets our way. , X" am told the churches in other coauitifies ave behind the movement. I don’t be- ■ lieve it. .1 know this: that when-the ‘" i anti-slavery movement began in Amer- : ; ica—another example of nainby pamby- ■ 1 ism, because didn’t the Greeks have slaves, and weren’t the Greeks in the forefront of civilisation?—the churches, with the exception of a very few of the Nonconformist bodies such as the j?,??,of Friends, were against it. William Lloyd Garrison, we are told, could not find even one church hall in Boston in which he co.uld deliver his anti-slavery lecture, and he had periorce to obtain a hall from an infidel, Abner Kneel and. No, Ido not believe that- the churches are behind this antiwar movement.

There is one matter, however, concerning which I cannot quite as warmly congratulate Or. Reid, and that is in A?c^ ing to rec,ut:e the grant to the H .E.A. from £2O to only £ls. 1 would -iave expected Cr. Reict to be- quite consistent, to- have moved that the request for a grant be declined. There is too much education now-a-days, and most, of these educated neoole' are getting anti-militarist too*. * The world could do. quite welL without them. \\ hy, they tell me that in England most ot the lntelligensia—men like H G Vi ells. Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, 1 rotessor Soddy, and so on —are all behind the Labour Party. What is the world coming to? I can say, again, »_* ve the good old times—l regretthat I cannot on this occasion so completely join Cr. Reid with rne—the times when the common herd had little or no schooling, when they knew their plaPes, and knew iust when to tench tlieir forelocks to their masters, a habit which I regret to say is dying out even in old England. These were the times. Education and anti-miiltarism and such like rubbish are sapping the moral fibre of our community, and particularly so of our common folk, but I feeL that had we a Council of Cr. Reids there would at least be some hope for our little community of Hawera.—l am, etc., TT JINGO. Hawera, Sept. 16.