THE BED SAINTS

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 165, 15 July 1920, Page 3

THE BED SAINTS

PIETY OR POLITICS—WHICH ?

(Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare

League)

"There is many a. man who acquires v. reputation for special virtue merely by denouncing the sins of others." The' Red labor ites of New Zealand are an interesting crowd. As a study they are certainly entertaining, and, were it not for the injury they are causing in industry and otherwise, we could laugh at their antics. At a time when the people are short of supplies of various necessary goods produced in New Zealand, these men advise that the- hours of work should be cut down to the loafers' limit. Their party says 40 "hours a week and no work on Saturdays. That appears too long to some of them and we have one of their prominent figures asserting "that l/bc members of no Union should work more than 6 hours a day for five days a week." Why so moderate? How is it they do not go the whole hog and declare for the loafers' paradise --no work at all? When the Reds started out to capture the Labor movement of New Zealand their methods were those of a. bully. The bludgeon of coarse* abuse was their favorite weapon. Inside the Unions the quieter and more moderate' men v.ere howled down, or treated to such scurrility that they, stayed away from .the meetings and thus the Reds f got ■control. The same brow-beating" tactics were adopted at public- meetings. Over and over again opixments were subjected to attacks in language which Mr Robert Semple once (forgetting the past), called "gutter language."' Right through the pieco the Reds have scored, not by reasoning but by bullying force and denial of the rights of free speech.

The Broken Hill miners are on strike and the Red advocates in New Zealand ure out-to raise hinds. They tell a moving picture of the sufferings of these* miners and their families. Every word that they say may b<> true, but recently the speakers in Wellington have explained tl|at if a six hour day can only be got for the Broken Hill miners then it will make vay for extending the six hour day to others. One candid individual jiiTarmed that these miners should, only work four hours a day, and that no class of workers should work more than six hours a day for five days in the weak. It looks, therefore, as if the- pious protestations about the sufferings of the lead miners in Australia, was a move of political industrialism rather than a true expression of human sympathy.

THE UNCTUOUS NOTE OF THE

REDS

To read tho speeches of the Red M.P's., and of then: confreres outside the- House, one might imagine that they were the only true virtuous people' in the Dominion. We are not here referring to Labor men who talk common-sense and refrain from everlasting posing. It is tho hectoring attitude, the never-ending pretence* of being thel only people with human .sympathies, and the egotistical assumption that they are the people who know, everything, that places the Reds as political conundrums. - Listen to their talk about "principles" and then watch their movements, and you will wonder whether you are. dealing with sane creatures or not. To-day they are against immigration, to-morrow they want 2000 miners brought from Australia. They consider any '.expressed desire for more production an attack on the workers, and argue' that if more is produced men will be out of work. Meantime they demand more houses, which implies more production.' It is. of ho use tiying to explain to these people that by more production is meant more' generad enterprise?, settlement, and progress, and that this ,would not entail loss of employment, but ;nore. . Their minds are fixed, though ofitn muddled, so vhafc what they are for in speech they are against in practice. All they want is plenty of space in which to pose as the only true prophets, priests, and leaders. After all, it appears to its clear that all their poses are political tricks dtv signed to enhance their own power, and their real objective is to be the Dictators of New Zealand.