MAY DAY CELEBRATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18549, 9 May 1922, Page 7

MAY DAY CELEBRATION

' TAME PROCEEDINGS IN SYDNEY. RESOLUTION AT DOMAIN. THE RED FLAG HOISTED, 1 Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. SYDNEY, May 8. The May Day celebration, organised by the Labour Council and the Socialist organisations, passed off tamely. The procession was minus the Red Flag And also the promised band, but the participants, wearing red rosettes, marched through the streets to the Domain, where from several platforms, emblazoned with declamatory banners against capitalism and wage slavery, and infavour of Communism, speeches were delivered to large crowds. The burden of the speeches was the necessity pf uniting against any reduction in wages or increase in working hours. A resolution was adopted pledging the workers to do all in their power to abolish labour slavery and to refuse to accept any less wages or to work longer hours. The adoption of the resolution was a signal for the hoisting of the Red Flag, and a coun-ter-demonstration _ with a display of many white bannerettes. Mrs Walsh (nee Pankhurat), in a militant speech, declared that they were celebrating the coming revolution, which was going to give power to the workers. Mr Howie (president of the Labour Council) declaimed against P ( rofessor Meredith Atkinson’s recent statements regarding Soviet Russia, declaring that he , did not fear the light- of day. ( He defended the Soviet system,. The proceedings generally were goodhumoured and orderly. [lmmediately after returning to England from Russia Professor Atkinson wrote ■‘lnside the Government- departments in general one meets with a few efficient persons, working in a hopeless background of general incompetence. It. is extraordinarily difficult to secure the accomplishment of the simplest executive acts, Five_ times I was sent to the station by the Soviet authorities to catch my train for_ Slamara. on the Volga, and each time it was not there. I had arranged' to travel with ariother Englishman and a Dutch representative. A commissar kindly placed a Ministerial oar at our disposal, and allowed us to disinfect it. On the fifth occasion we arrived at the station at six in the evening with our large wagon of .supplies, only to find the oar had gone out empty at I o’clock attached to another train. That kind of thing happened on innumerable occasions to all of us? It is made worse by The Russians’ incorrigible habit of promising anything. Out of the goodness of his heart I well believe Russia is the land of broken promise. ‘‘Not a single department of Government runs with even elementary smoothness. To get a railway pass or a visa for a passport is a tremendous business, and may occupy days of a man’s time. It is not due to obstructionism, for we found for the most part a real desire to help, and an unfailing courtesy on all occasions. The lack of capacity for organisation seems to be a chronic defect of the Russian character. ‘Neechevo’—‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘what is all the fuss about’—expresses the central characteristic of the Russian attitude to life. For centuries he has lived pnder oppressive and inefficient land has therefore developed a mixed fatalism and cheerful nonchalance, that express themselves equally in his national songs in the minor key and his boisterous enjoyment of such good things as life may cast, up for him. He is the most lovable, most hopeless, most attractive, and most exasperating human creature on the face of the earth.]