VINDICTIVE, DISLOYAL.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 11, 15 November 1919, Page 3

VINDICTIVE, DISLOYAL.

A Reveller in Filth

IT was alleged against a Member of the House of Representatives by Sir James Allen recently that he was vindictive, disloyal, and a reveller in filth. If it is true that the person referred to is disloyal—it doesn't matter much whether he is vindictive or filthy— the point that he has taken an oath of allegiance to King George* V. seems to be vital.

One is not particularly concerned with ono person, who-is alleged to be filthy, disloyal and vindictive, but one is most certainly concerned with th« point that there are large

numbers of people in New Zealand, who may vote for a disloyal, filthy and vindictive person. It w a curious phase in the ignorant that they mistake cant for power, noise for energy, and shibboleth for genius.

In New Zealand during the past lew years, some of the most ignorant men who ever came into it have been permitted by the authorities—who have been too decent to deport them —to sow tlie crowsfeet of dissention wherever they could do so. It is astounding that despite the authorities, these people are ablo to obtain places in Parliament, One M.P. in the New Zealand Parliament went to gaol for sedition—and deserved every month he served.

Here is another, who is. vindictive, disloyal, and revels in filth, who does not go to gaol, although he too is not unaware of the activities within the walls of H.M. Prisons. The good old British constitution declares that if the people want a man to represent them in Parliament they must have him. In the British Parliament, a firebrand who once gets into the House of Commons, usually becomes an ordinary, everyday, decent person. In New Zealand, in some notable cases this is not so. Emolument merely in-

creases the spleen of the vindictive, the disloyal, and the reveller in filth.

The whole point is that the people of New Zealand need not have this kind of firebrand to rule over them. It is not in the least necessary to pay a disloyal member of Parliament six hundred (or three hundred) pounds to curse the Empire to which we and himself belong. In many electorates, the type of man of whom Sir James Allen spoke are seeking the votes of the ignorant.

It is useful to say to people who are likely to return the disloyalists to power that there is not a single one of these people in New Zealand who has ever done a halfpennyworth of good to the Dominion or Empire, and that they may be kept from doing harm to New Zealand by your refusal to vote 'for them at the forthcoming election.

The iniquitous band to which they belong have within the past few months tried by several means to accomplish a labour revolution in New Zealand. That they have not accomplished it is due solely to the sanity of the present Government, who have refused to be dragged by a mob which is happily being at last put in its place.

The man of whom Sir James Allen spoke is not a working man's representative, and he will be unable to prove that he has ever done a single working-man any good whatever. There is only one real workingman's representative in the House at the moment—the others being adventurers, who will, sooner or later, like Tom Mann, flee to some other country to esoape their "friends."

If the people of any electorate place a disloyal man in a seat they are themselves disloyal. A man who is proved to be disloyal has no right in Parliament, or right to permission to appeal to the electors. A vindictive, disloyal reveller in filth has indeed no right in New Zealand. Yet in New Zealand he is licensed to talk, and protected in his position by the British Crown, at which he sneers.