LABOUR AND THE SETTLEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17426, 21 September 1918, Page 6

LABOUR AND THE SETTLEMENT.

The Austrian. Note seems to have supplied a convenient starting point for the discussion on peace terms at the LiterAllied Labour Conference in London. Since the British Labour Party includes a section which • has been ready to advocate peace by negotiation, there need be no surprise that som© resolutions described by Mr Will Thorne as "freakish" should have been sprung upon the Conference by individuals more eccentric than responsible. Typical of these would appear to have been the proposal which Mrs Snowden invited the Conference to adopt, to the effect that the Allied Governments should be asked to use wisely and sympathetically the opportunity afforded by the Austrian Note and mak9 an immediate joint statement of the Allied terms. The resolutions brought forward by the pacifists appear, however, to have fallen upon stony ground, and nobody need lament their fate. The Allies have placed their cards upon the table with sufficient plainness. The reply of the United States Government to the Austrian proposal draws attention to this fact in formal terms. If the Central Powers are not content with the statements by the Allies of their war-aims, but persist in assuming that the Allies have in the background other terms which they will be prepared to produce upon invitation in a spirit of negotiation, bargain, and compromise, their miscalculation is their own affair. If the Entente Powers are to achieve their objectives they cannot have the slightest hope of doing so by negotiation at the present time. When Germany manifests a disposition to consider seriously the conditions of peace which the Allies have laid down, then the time for discussion, will be at hand, and the absolute victory which is essential for the Allies will have been virtually wqn. But that time is not yet. The InterAllied Labour Conference has shown the sanity of its outlook by an appreciation of most of these considerations. Its War-aims Committee recommended that the Entente Powers should present a collective declaration of their war-aims and secure a statement of the enemy's war-aims. The weakness of the recommendation lies in the uselessness of the procedure that was suggested. The enemy has had a continuous opportunity of making a statement of his war-aims; but so far his essays in that direction have been so extraordinary that the Allies have had no other course than to treat them with contempt. They have had a sufficiency of evasive and hypocritical statements from Germany. It is futile to imagine that the Central Powers are going to state their war-aims when their paramount aim at present is to draw out of the war as easily as possible on terms upon which they may smugly congratulate themselves.

The real logic of the situation seems to have been clearly appreciated by the majority of the delegates at the Inter-Allied Labour Conference. It is highly satisfactory that they should have adopted the whole of the fourteen points enunciated by President Wilson as embodying the fundamental principles upon which a lasting peace must be based. The President's conception of the peace programme of the world, as defined in his address to Congress, - i*ii eluded the fallowing principles: Adequate guarantees for tho reduction of national armaments; an absolutely impartial adjustment of colonial claims, the interests of the peoples concerned having equal weight with tho claims of tho Government whoso title is to be determined ; all Russian territory to he evacuated, and Russia to be given full opportunity for self-development; complete restoration of Belgium in full, and free sovereignty; all French territory to be freed; and the wrong done by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine righted; the readjustment of Italian frontiers on the liues of nationality; the peoples of Austria-Hungary to bo accorded an opportunity of autonomous self-development; Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro to be evacuated, Serbia given access to the sea, and the relations of Balkan States settled cn the lines of allegiance and nationality; non-Turkish nationalities in the Ottoman Empire to be assured of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles to be permanently free to all ships; tho establishment of an independent Polish State; the formation of an Association of Nations affording guarantees of political and territorial independence for all States. At almost every point President Wilson's programme, coincides with that which was submitted a few days earlier on behalf of Groat Britain. Germany does not waut to hear a repetition of this sortof thing, which makes her unpa.sy while arousing all her impotent fury. She wants to negotiate now, and she wants to dominate the negotiations. When, more chastened in spirit, she has reached the stage of being really prepared to listen, she will find the Allies ever ready to repeat what they expect from her.

It is interesting to learn that the Auckland Railway League is engaged in an effort to induce the local bodies in the North Island to join in a " demand " that, when another distribution of Ministerial offices becomes necessary, a member from the North Island should be appointed to the office of Minister of Public Works. The fact supplies a characteristic illustration of the assertiveness and cool assurance which have accompanied the growth of importance of the Auckland district- The only thing that is at all surprising about the proposal is that the 'demand" issoexpressed as to suggest tho possibility that the appointment of a representative of a constituency in the Wellington provincial district as Minister of Public Works would be acceptable in Auckland. It is, however, very doubtful whether the majority of the people of Auckland would not be more dissatisfied over tho presence of a Wellington member at the head of the Public Works Department than they seem to be over the fact that a South Island member is responsible for ' tho administration of that department, which, of course, is in normal times the great spending department of tho State. They might hope to secure some approach to what they call jus-t-ice in the allocation of public money for expenditure if a South Island member had oontrol of the distribution of the funds. They would, however, look for nothing but injustice if a representative of the Wellington district, which is the chief competitor with them, were charged with the .of preparing the allocations. In that unfortunate event there would be a grave danger that the gi-eat northern peninsula, for which the local bodies themselves have done so little in the way cf providing and maintaining suitable communications, would continue to suffer the neglect that furnishes the burden of the complaints of the Auckland people against successive Governments. The Auckland Hailway League seems, therefore, to have erred—rather singularly erred—on the side of modesty. It should have gone the whole hog " and demanded that an Auckland member, preferably one of its own nomination,- should be the next Minister of Public Works.

It is highly questionable whether the construction of the railway lines, about which the Auckland Railway League is concerned, is not a distinctly less urgent need than the construction of reasonably good roads to some of the more remotely situated settlements. Even in the great northern peninsula, "the roadless north" as it has been exagqeratively called, the principal need of the residents may be said to be not' so much the extension of railway communications as the maintenance of good roads to the magnificent harbours with which the peninsula is blessed. Of the hardships that are inflicted on settlers through the absence of suitable, or even passable, roads the proof is constantly being provided. What the Auckland Star justly describes as " a bush tragedy " furnishes—if the facts be correctly stated— the most recent and a most striking and sad illustration of the serious diabilities which settlers in the back-blocks have to suffer through the absence of roads to their homes. The illustration is afforded in the death of an ex-soldier, who was alone when he was killed while felling bush and whose body was not discovered until some time after his death. 'The approaches to this man's section, taken up by him after his discharge from military service, are thus described by a correspondent who went, with others, from Ruatiti to help to carry the corpse to the end of the Ruatiti load, a point 24 miles from Raetihi, where they were to be met with the coffin :

To reach the scene of the accident wo had to travel thirteen miles along what is supposed to be a. six-feet formed track, which in many places is up to the horse'a knees in mud, and often only four feet wide. The track formation extends thirteen miles back from the Ruatlii road, and to within about two miles of the soldier settlers' holdings. When we left the track we had to climb down a gorge into the bed of a rough boulder-strewn creek, with varying depths of from ankle to waist deep. This is at present the only way to reach these farms from" ihe Ruatiti side, and it is along this track that the settlers pack their stores, grass-seed, etc., and then carry on their backs down the creek to their respective camps. And it was up this creek half-a-mile of which was from knee to waist deep, that we had to carry the body, and the route till we reached the formed track was so rough and narrow that only, two men could carry at a time. When we reached the pack track we were able to carry the stretcher along the muddy road in relays of four at a time right through to the Ruatiti road.

A statement which was made by the Chief Commissioner at the last meeting of the Otago Land Board, Telatrve to tho treatment of roklier settlers on the Clifton block, near Balclutha, suggested that some of the complaints that have been made upon this subject- were, to say the least, very misleading. There is, perhaps, a tendency at times to magnify the drawbacks with which discharged soldiers have to contend when they take up sections ofland. Tile public, being generally desirous that the soldier-cottiers shall be treated with every possible consideration, is sympathetic to stories of hardship. It is, because of this, probably apt to give a too ready ear to allegations of official unconcern which turn out, upon investigation, to be somewhat extravagant, if not actually fanciful. Upon one point, however, there should be agreement on the part of the community, and that is as to the undesirability of placing soldiersettlers on land that is practically inaccessible and as to'the unwisdom of placing discharged soldiers" who have no experience of bush country in the midst of virgin forests where they have literally to carve cut a home for themselves. The case of the ex-soldier, to whose death we have referred, seems to have been that of an absolute novice at bush-felling who was allowed to take up a bush section. If he had had no experience in bush life, it is obvious that he was unfitted for the work which ho had to undertake when a section of this character was allotted to him. As the Auckland Star observes, the physical strain of the work, the hardships of the life, and the depressing effect of the loneliness, surely do not make the best conditions for a man suffering perhaps both physically aud mentally from the effects of the war. It is bad enough for a man in the enjoyment of rude health and in the possession of his full physical powers to have to settle on bush country, especially when it is difficult of access. The discharged soldiers should not be expected to take up land in lonely districts remote from the majn lines of communication or in localities where the general conditions of life are severe.