Te Aroha And Ohinemuri News Published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Afternoons. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1917 ANTI-COMPULSION STRIKERS v. PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE

Te Aroha News, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5479, 25 April 1917, Page 2

Te Aroha And Ohinemuri News Published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Afternoons. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1917 ANTI-COMPULSION STRIKERS v. PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE

The Wellington Post says : —The hope that better counsels w ill ob a’n among the coal miners has led us to refrain from making a further indictment of the anti-Parliament strike, nor do we intend to do so now at any length, since the final word in the Ministerial negotiations has not been spoken. At this Btage it is not necessary to condemn—as we have frequently done—the uneconomics and unnationalism of restriction of output, and the unpatriotism of striking in order to snatch from the Government’s hands an essential war weapon. We believe that the position has now been presented to the coal-miners with the utmost thoroughness; the time for pleading is past, and the time has come for the coal minets as responsible New Zealanders to make their Ohoice, and to take the consequences. But to the public at large there is Still something to be said. It is very important .that the people as a whole Should recognise that the strike against the Military Service Act is ; not only directed at their Government and : their Parliament, but at •themselves. This impudent minority demand that Parliament should hamstring the' country’s defences—under threat of a fuel farqine—is a blow at the people’s right of self-government, and particularly at their collective right of self-defence j and those per*.

sons who cannot mentally figure out that a great constitutional principle —and in fact the whole question of national existence—is involved, may, if common-sense does not prevail, be able to physically feel in the course of a few days the immediate consequences of the industrial civil war which the Ministerial delegation is still endeavouring to avoid. If he is forced to walk for lack of train or trarncar, and if he finis that he cannot ship his goods for want of coal, the ordinary citizen will take notice. Snch deprivations the average New Zealander will cheerfully bear because of the war, but will it not be a shame and a disgrace if the public are penalised, and essential industries crippled, because the leaders of a section engaged in coal mining wish to point a pistol at the head of Parliament ? That is what the latest Red Flag movement amounts to; and the people who see it, and those who do not see it but may feel it, should direct to the subject some hard thinking. The issue is anti-compulsion strikes v. the Parliament and the people of New Zealand. There can be only one answer.