MENACE OF COMMUNISM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 285, 5 November 1925, Page 10

MENACE OF COMMUNISM.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTION ISSUE. SYDNEY WOMEN AROUSED. A big women’s “rally” in support of Mr Bruce’s campaign in ±bo Australian electoral light was held in Sydney recently. There was nothing timid or halting about the feminine applause given generously to women speakers, says a Sydney paper. Rut with the exception of Miss Preston Stanley, M.L.A., with her resonant contralto, the feminine speakers failed to fling their voices very far down over the multi-coloured sea of hats. Still, row after row of women at the back of the hall applauded with vigour all the same. IVLiss Preston Stanley moved that: “M'e, the 4000 women here assembled, view with horror the rise in Australia of the monstrous obsession known as ‘Communism,’ and which has debased the name of liberty, challenged the right of democracy—and threatens the foundations of civilisation. We solemnly pledge ourselves to an organised effort to arouse the whole womanhood of the State to fight and to destroy this malignant, sinister and treacherous menace.” The new woman legislator was in fine form. She charged gloriously against the Communists with a wealth of simile and epigram. “The most pestilential thing that has ever been belched forth upon the world during the whole of time,” was how she described Bolshevism. “The mind reels,” she said, “at the stark horror of the whole record of Russia. The Red virus is being inoculated and circulated through the body politic, bringing demoralisation and destruction.” Miss Stanley quoted from a Labour organ a statement that the act of Mr Bruce in going to the country on the Communist issue was the first step in the break-up of the British Empire. The statement added that if Labour won the election it would have the authority to go forward with socialising schemes. The speaker likened the battle against the Communist menace as a war after the war. The people in Australia who were fighting Nationalist propaganda were doing the bidding of the Moscow Communists. Dame Mary Hughes, who was in the chair, said the issues of the election struck at the roots of our social, economic and national life. The people’s liberty and the supremacy of law were in peril. Miss M. E. ,T. Cocks made an impassioned speech, in which she asked were the women of Australia going to allow the work of the great pioneers of tho past to be undone by a Garden or a Walsh? Miss Preston Stanley's motion was here agreed to unanimously.