NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19349, 9 June 1926, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE NATION AND THE STRIKE. The folly of the general* strike was discussed in the leading article of the Times of May 6, an issue of only four pages. " The nation has shown its confidence in trade unionism and its approbation of trade unionism when trade unionism has been conducted upon reasonable principles and upon constitutional lines- It knows that the overwhelming mass of trade unionists are good and loyal subjects with the same general opinions and ideals as the rest of the community. It knows how they stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest in the Great War. How should it not feel goodwill and sympathy to these millions who are Englishmen like themselves ? But good will and sympathy cannot blind its judgment to the fact that a general strike inflicts a grievous injury upon the community as a whole. They are committing a high offence and a dangerous offence against the nation, and neither sympathy nor goodwill will prevent the nation from reprobating this' misdeed as it . deserves. The trade unionists themselves, and more particularly the trade union • officials, must know perfectly well that in a general strike they will have the nation against them. Indeed they must, by this time know that a general strike aud the whole policy on which it rests are' not merely distasteful, but are abhorrent to a large number of their own members. Men and women who joined the unions did not;, join them with ,an expectation that they would be called upon to hold their fellows, their own class, and their own relations to ransom at the. bidding .of officials in whose nomination they took little or no concern. They did not. understand that they might .be summoned to inflict privation and loss upon all the | homes of the country as a means of torturing the public who are wholly out- j side a particular quarrel into forcing the Government to surrender to the dicta-, tion of these officials. That is the plain meaning of the general strike which they are now ordered with autocratic. precision to put in force. It is an engine of extortion to be applied to the nation . —with the certainty of enormous loss, and the probability of economic disaster—until the nation, as is fondly hoped,: or as some at least pretend to hope—compels Parliament to bow to a usurping authority. Indignation and resentment are general among the body of the people at this attempt to force them into surrender. They will not surrender, and the sooner enemies of the people realise that they will not surrender, the better for them and for us all."