May 1.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6847, 8 May 1890, Page 2

May 1.

Such a panic-stricken week as the last week of April Europe has not seen for many a long year. All the armed millions were sent into barracks to be ready to shoot down the unarmed millions in case they demanded their rights with too much ardour. la Paris there appears to have been foundation for the feeling. Bludgeons iron-tipped and bombs were found in that city of the unhappy memories of the Commune with its assassins, devastators, and those unsexed women the petroleuses. We remember a friend of years gone by who, serving in the French army, formed one of a patrol detachment which discovered a guillotin e with a list of proscribed, in a barn during: the '48 troubles. Whenever he heard the iniquities of Louis Napoleon denounced, our friend used invariably to tell his Btovy of that guillotine. The story and the deeds of the communards inako us believe the bludgeons and bombs, and the necessity for the fourteen thousand arrests of Communists. To complete the case, we have the Billy rumour of Boulangist and Eoyalist conspiracies, which but for the general disorganisation of panic would have been impossible. But elsewhere in Europe hardly a cloud ; throughout Germany indeed scarcely a demonstration. And after all, what ? Labour paraded, labour was orderly, and labour appears to have said nothing, formulated no demand, made no special protest. Nothing more was possible. It is the first time that labour has joined in our demonstrations lasting from the East to the West. The appearance was the great thing. It is the firat sign of a solidarity which will make the twentieth century different from all its predecessors.