AUSTRALIA'S CRISIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19124, 16 September 1925, Page 10

AUSTRALIA'S CRISIS.

Australia's Prime Minister is not likely to be cowed by threats of what may happen to himself and his Government should he persist in his attitude toward Messrs. Walsh and Johnson and men of their type. His speech at Dandenong, the chief town in his own electorate, reveals in its deliberately chosen words a man in deadly earnest. He has reason to be. He does not overstate the position one whit. A grave crisis has been occasioned by the lawless element that makes no Secret of its aim to control Labour and bludgeon Australia into acceptance of communism. The statement at the Third International in Moscow by the secretary of Sydney's Trades and Labour Council leaves no room for doubt about that aim. It means mob rule at the dictation of a handful of treasonable mischief-makers. However drastic deportation may seem, it becomes absolutely necessary as the only rational answer to those who challenge social order and good government. It is not so drastic as it seems. These men, "whiteanting" the Labour movement and working red ruin in the community, murderously attack the social organism, and it merely shakes them off. Self-defence could hardly take a milder form. That Mr. Bruce's view of the crisis and his attitude to it are right will be realised by all who care .for national well-being. The Communist intriguers have launched a mutinous propaganda, encouraging British seamen to be disloyal to their own trade-union leaders. They have set out to honeycomb Australian Labour with this same reckless bariditry. The weakkneed subservience of the Labour Government of New South Wales reveals how far they have gone in infecting general politics. Unless they are checked, there is an end to law and order. It is idle to plead for them that they are exercising citizen-liberty: no sensible estimate of that liberty can extend it to include license to play the highwayman. The men so offending in the present instance have flagrantly outlawed themselves, and if the trade unions shrink from disowning them there is all the more reason for the Federal Government's effort to protect the people of the Commonwealth. This crisis is by no means Australia's only. Britain, and especially British Labour, is being compelled to face it *, but there, happily, as Mr. Clynes' words indicate, common sense is fairly sure to triumph. The challenge to social order has been made in New Zealand also, and here the same answer seems assured. But the risk is not one to play with, and Australia's experience points that moral as certainly as Mr. Bruce's attitude indicates th 6 ultimately convincing reply to the challenge.