LANCINGS WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 1919. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE COAL SHORTAGE. The Same Old Lie.

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 992, 9 July 1919, Page 12

LANCINGS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 1919. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE COAL SHORTAGE. The Same Old Lie.

/ Here shall the Press the people's right mainUnawed by principle and unbribed by gain , Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts Pledged to Beligion, Liberty and Law.

START the ball of mendacity. and . keep dt rolling is apparently the fixed policy of. the Labour extremists —- we shall not insult the honest loyal Labour majority—by calling the Red ' Fed. element the Labour Party As we proved very clearly last week the Government can be no more fairly blamed for the coal shortage and the railway "cuts" than can the Amir 01 Afghanistan, the Sultan of Timbucktoo or "President" De Valera of the Sinn Fein Republic, to say nothing of the Man in the Moon. There is far better reason for assuming that all this grievous. interruption of industry is due tot some underground plotting to bring about individual and commercial chaos and so pave the way for the establishment of an, I.W.VY. and Bolshevik regime under which the hated "boorjoice" would be wiped \ °P*- * * * '* * * But in furthering the Red Fed. propaganda it is found necessary to concoct and maintain the fiction that the Government is to blame. Apparently the word has been passed round among the Red Fed. faithful that • meetings must be held and resolutions passed attacking the Government for not having "averted" the curtailment of the railway service. The Wanganui branch of the "Labour". Partv has passed such a. resolution and similar expressions of opinion have been solemnly recorded by other bodies of nature, And so the stale and siUv oK lie is perpetuated, all, of course, with a view to influencing the coming elections - iS ~ * Fortunately the great . majority of the workers are not so gullible as the Bolshevik wire-pullers apparently imagine. On all sides we hear of workmen of the more intelligent tvoe declaring thev are "fed up" with tho Bolshevik blatherskite, and no wonder when thev see factories and workshops closed and work decreasing m volume on the wharves and elsewhere a s the indirect but certain result of the insane incitements to industrial anarchy, to "class warfare," which are tittered by the soap-box professors of economics. •