MR NASH AND THE WAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24525, 6 February 1941, Page 11

MR NASH AND THE WAR

TO THE EDITOR ; Sir,—There is an old. saying that “ chickens come home to roost.” Mr Nash has just told us he was a pacifist. So were Messrs Semple, Webb, and Co. during the last war. What did Mr Ramsay MacDonald do advocating peace for England, and what did M. Blum do for France with a 36-hour week? France is now Hitler’s slave, with a 60 or 80-hour week. It is a pity that vote-buying politicians escape any personal loss through advocating such nonsense.

Mr Nash used to tell us of the wonders of Russia. He arranged also a trade agreement with Germany on more favourable terms than with England. In the country,. however, that gives him his living he was convicted in 1921 of bringing into New Zealand literature of a character which, according to Mr Hunt. S.M., was “’as poisonous to the body politic as typhoid germs deliberately placed in a city reservoir.”/ How different was the action of the Labour Party when Messrs Munro and McMillai, were telling us at a meeting in Dunedin that “the Labour Party was definitely out to assist the Reds in Spain,” but when our own nation is engaged in a struggle of unprecedented magnitude Mr Munro is “ not sure whether it is a capitalistic war or not.” If men like these with the aid oi Mr Webb’s wharf labourers at £2 7s 8d a day can defeat Hitler, whom we complacently watched rearming for 20 years, he is more easily defeated - than we have yet found him to be.—l am. etc., J. J. N.