RECRUITING RALLY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16665, 10 April 1916, Page 6

RECRUITING RALLY

TWO SOCIALIST SPEAKERS. The rally sounded by the George Street School Fife and Drum Band, making their first public appearance in their new uniform, gathered a large crowd to the Town Hall steps on Saturday evening, : and, in spite of the cold snap, the picturesque pungent oratory of Messrs Steve Boreham and Mat Bradley, Socialists both, and speaking " the language of tho people," held the assembly together interested right up to tho moment when the playing of the Natiorial Anthem put a period to the meeting. Introducing the speakers, his Worship the Mayor expressed prido and satisfaction in the circumstances that for the latest draft of reinforcements Otago had sent four men more than the quota. His announcement that Mr Boreham had lost one of _ his sons at the front and had another still serving evoked sympathetic applause. Mr Steve Boreham, who spoke spiritedly and with certain dramatic force, invited the eligible to realise that service was a duty not only to the Empire and to their relatives, but to themselves. They had to choose between the freedom of the British Empire's glorious constitution and the rule of Huns bloodier than Attila knew how to be. Drawing upon personal experience for a contrast, he told how in Rangoon, for hitting a black fellow while under tho British flag, he had been fined 60 rupees, " and," ho added, served mc right " but in an Essen billiard room ho had seen a " popinjay" lieutenant strike and spit in the face of an adult marker for some trifling reason. And 1 yet there were "proletarian plugs" and "Socialistic blather-blowers" who said they would be treated as well under erman rule as they would be under British! To the " war-married " the speaker said there was no excuse for any fit man to stay at home. It was the duty of the married to fight for those dear to them. He charged the young women to have nothing to do with any man who was not prepared to fight for their protection. In this war Capital and Labour were as one. He urged all cligibles not to ask wha.t others were doing, but to realise their own duty and enlist at once.—(Applause.) Mr Mat Bradley opened with a kindly tribute to the memory of the late Captain Martineaux, a V.C. hero who had just gone to his last reward. The speaker acknowledged the sobriquet of Socialist, and said that, while a Socialist, ho had no time for murder, war, or compulsory systems, but, realising that the cauee was right and that the voluntary system had failed, he was for compulsion right up to the hilt.—" Hear, hear.") Let employers shut out eligibles, and the latter would be conscripted in three weeks, ae they would have either to serve or sfarve. Unfortunately, this would not affect the young man whose father could afford to keep him, and that was why he (tho speaker) was a Socialist. As between consr-npt'on now and conscription wlhcn tho Germans ruled us, he submitted that it was bettor to risk the devil we knew than the devil we did not now. —(Laughter.) The man in New Zealand who said he had no quarrel with tho Germans was in a country wher" lie had no riirht to be.—(" Hear, hear.") At tho close of a recent meet : ng a man had gathered a crowd at the fountain, and had told tho young men they should not enlist unless they were promised £1 a day. Such a man. he considered, should be . arrested for discouraging recruiting. When compulsion was adopted, continued the speaker, " God forgive Bill Massoy if he pays the conscripted man as much as he pays the volunteer!" In conclusion, he appealed to the eligible in tho crowd to cone forward. During the evening four rrenrts cam" forward. The George Street School Bnnii, which had played accentably nt intervals, and the speakers were thanked by acclamation upon the call of the Mayor.