Freedom

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 236, 6 October 1938, Page 13

Freedom

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Back to freedom is the keynote of every Nationalist speech. What is the motive? Why back? The men and women who fought and died to give us the freedom we have to-day went forward, wrung concessions from the same class who to-day, and in every age and clime, have been eager to obtain and tenacious in their grasp for power. The Nationalists know that ignorance is the bar to progress all along the line —that as communities grow in intelligence their standards become higher. They know that if they can persuade the electors to step backways or sideways they are then further away from the fact of to-day that there is a form of slavery that transfers the products of one man's labour to another man's pocket just as effectually as in the days of the chattel slave. They know that they cannot justify it on pioral or religious grounds. The same motive prompted them to besmirch the name Socialist. But that is played out now for most people know that we are all Socialists, are all bound together in vital relationships from which there is no escape. No man livoth unto himself. The. interests of one are those of all. What do we find on looking back? Wretchedness, gloom, slave camps, hungry pcojle lacking freedom to procure food. We have not forgotten tho social conditions prior to Labour taking office. All this talk about the people losing their freedom reminds me of Paddy’s flea. When he put his thumb down and thought he had it, he found it wasn't there. Freedom in its broadest sense means freedom to live and procure all that is needed for a healthy life. Apart from our political opinions, we are all doing tho same thing —we are all trying to live. In your report of a recent Court case you said, 11 The judge asked the prisoner hq,w lie lived, and he promptly replied by food and tho Court smiled." Now the only person who could put the smile in its right place was the prisoner for it is obvious That we all live by food. I think the smiles must have originated in an instinctive knowledge that for tho great majority there is absolutely n,) freedom to procure food. But there is still one thing left that is absolutely free to all, that is the air, and although you cannot make your breakfast on that alone it is good to know that no one has commercialized it and we still have the freedom to breathe. A little sober reflection will show that everything else that would sustain life has been confiscated and commandeered. Verily the rich live on the poor and the wise live on the ignorant. On the 15th

we vote for Labour and the cause that needs assistance, and the wrongs that need resistance, for the future in the distance and the good that we can do —I am, etc., GEORGE LICZ.