OPPOSED TO WAR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 497, 29 October 1928, Page 11

OPPOSED TO WAR

CHRISTIAN-SOCIALIST IN EDEN

Opposition to war, and an opinion that the country required co-operative as opposed to competitive production, formed the basis of an address to electors by Mr. O. E. Burton, Christian Socialist candidate for Eden. The speaker, addressing his audience from a “soap-box,” asserted that if the strong went on spoiling the weak a tremendous explosion was inevitable. To have. financial magnates juggling with the price of necessities was immoral. He said war was impossible if public spirit was against it, and that if Japan, with 80,000,000 people, wanted to come to New Zealand, our one and a-quarter million could not stop them. This remark led to interruption, and a voice remarked: “You like those Japs, but we’ll keep them out a4l the same.” The candidate asserted that brotherliness was better than expeditionary forces and navies, and questioned whether the Germans had committed the atrocities credited to them. On the candidate retiring his place was taken by an aged speaker, who denounced the present moral garments as moth-eaten.