The Moving Finger

Maoriland Worker, Volume 8, Issue 325, 16 May 1917, Page 4

The Moving Finger

G "The moving fllngrer writes: and, 0 G having writ, moves on."—OMAR. O C»OOCXX)OUOCXJ«X3OO?JOOOOOCXX500

The cable has brought remarkable news from Russia within the past two weeks. On May 4 it was stated that "the situation is undoubtedly tense," and that a rupture had occurred between the Government and the Workmen's and Soldiers' Committee, the latter demanding that the Government should take the people into its confidence regarding Russia's engagements with the Allies. M.Miliukoff, one of the most popular men in Russia hitherto, had a gigantic demonstration made against him hecause ho declared that Russia would observe the Czar's foreign agreements. On top of this news came the sensational announcement that matters were "not satisfactory" on the Russian-German front. Not a shot had been fired by the Austrians or Russians for a month, and an armistice was said to exist along the whole front. The soldiers on both sides had left off killing one another, and were fraternising instead. Looking at the situation from this distance, and handicapped by the paucity of information, this writer is constrained to think that this new development is more likely to bring the war to a speedy conclusion than anything that has yet happened. A variety of reasons are responsible for this opinion. One is that tho fraternising of Russian and German soldiers is exceedingly likely to precipitate revolution in Germany.

On May 5 a further cable announced that the "Workmen's and Soldiers' Committee was gravely dissatisfied with the Note which the Provisional Government had addressed to the Allies, promising to carry on the war to a victorious end and not to make a separate peace. As this paper has pointed out all along, the German workers have from the commencement been strongly Anti-War as well as Anti-Conscription, an,d they have also been anti-German in their attitude towards the German military caste. Whatever else is not clear, it is quite evident from these items, of news that the Revolution in Russia has only commenced, and that many processes must be passed through before its climax is reached. That does not mean that the Revolution must pass through physical force phases before it is complete. No one can say how the pages of Russia's history will bo written during the next few months. Indeed, he would be a rash prohpet who would venture to tell us how the history of any of the nations of the earth is to be written during the next ten years, whether in luminous letters of Peace and Human Brotherhood or in blood-red blotches of Hate made to the music of War's crashing thunder and by the glare of the lightning flames of Hell. In view of the fact that, during the whole of his political career, Mr. W. A. Holman, Premier of N.S.W., has stood pledged to abolish the Upper House, his action in appointing a batch of 21 nominees—the most heterogeneous Imoh of political "unfits" that has yet tottered into that Chamber of Fat Landlords—is nothing less than a grave scandal, probably the gravest of the many scandals that have besmirched the politics of the premier State. In the whole batch of Mr. Holman's nominees there is not one bona fide Labor representative. There is a Chamber of Commerce man, a.nd a promoter of prize fights and questionable vaudeville shows. There are several ex-Labor polititicians, who broke their promises to their constituents and played the part of traitor to the movement that made them politically. And there are others. The reason for these appointments may be explained in one of two ways. To make Labor's task of abolishing the wretched and vicious old institution a matter of much greater difficulty, and therefore to lengthen out the conservation of the interests of the class whoso , business it is to rob the people. Or it may be that these men—or most of them — were appointed for the same reason that quite a number of wealthy s°rulities were appointed in the days when Sir Henry Parkes was Premier. But that is a story that will keep.

It sometimes happens that men get their heads- broken with bludgeons of their own making. My old friend, Mr. George Black (ex-Republican, ex-So-cialist, ex-Chief Secretary in the Hoiman Ministry, ex-Labor member for Namoi in the N.S.W. Parliament, and ex-everything that is of the workingclass), need not feel surprised if every now and then somebody hits him severely with such a piece o£ wood. In the very first issue of. "The Socialist, , in 1894, Mr. Black wrote an article entitled "Legislative Thuggery," in advocacy of the abolition of the Upper House, to which a number of new appointments had just been made. The now Ms.L.C. were-Mostly men who had suffered defeat at the preceding , election, and this is what Mr. Black wrote: "For instance, look at Dibbs's late.appointments; most of these nominees were refused arimfcsion to the Assembly at the last general election; now, with the se.!GC unblushing audacity that previously characterised at least half the body (Parkes's nominees), they • slip, by back-door influence, beyond public control into the second and suvreme chamber—practically an asylum for the politically destitute. Surely this nullification of the country's 'sacred right of rejection' is a travesty en representative government." To s-tl the point in Mr. IMack's strictures oi" 23 years ago, you have*only -torerr.einberlhat Mr. Blac'i, having been overwhelmingly defeated at last election, has just been appointed (along wirh twenty other rejects and .political destitutes) to the N.S.W. Upper House. : JffIJSpCEIC^TIGN;