ARMED RESISTANCE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8200, 28 June 1919, Page 3

ARMED RESISTANCE.

AN M.P’S. SPEECH. LABOR ASKS A QUESTION. (Special to “Mail”). WELLINGTON, Last night. The secretary of the Wellington Labor Representation Committee (Mr R. McKeen) informed a “New Zealand Times” representative that he had sent the following letter to the Acting-Prime Minister (Sir James Allen):—■

I have been instructed by the Wellington Labor Representation Committee to direct your attention to the following statement reported to have been made by Mr W. H. Field, M.P., in the course of a speech at the Manawatu Agricultural and Pastoral Association’s rooms in Palmerston North on Saturday, June 14th, and which appeared in the columns of the

“New Zealand Times” of June 17th. and in the “Manawatu Daily Times” of June 16th: —The following report from the “New Zealand Times” reads: —“They (referring to the Labor party) would like to attain their ends wfith one fell swoop, and ;i .....g a n end that could only mean civil wav. Personally, he would shoulder his rifle to prevent being dispossessed and robbed if those people had their way, and he believed every other farmer would do the same.” The “Manawatu Daily Times” said:—“The Labor party were getting in the thin edge of the wedge, and if they were not careful there would be civil war. He was sure every man present would be prepared to shoulder his rifle to protect his rights sooner than let these gentlemen have their way. Bolschevism was spreading, and it was their duty to see it never got a hold in this country. ’ ’

My committee considers that, if Mr Field was correctly reported, his declaration in favor of armed resistance to possible legal enactments of a con-

stitutionally elected Government, if that Government, happened to he a Labor one, is a direct incitement to violence, social disorder, bloodshed, and anarchy, and cannot be construed otherwise than as a threat that if the Labor party is returned to power at the next, or any subsequent General Election, the then popularly elected, representative, and responsible Government of the country will be held up at the point of the rifle by Mr Field and his fellow-terrorists and enemies of constitutional and orderly government. The sinister design of this particular agitator in the cause of vested interests and exploitation to terrify the general public with threats of rebellion and civil war into withholding support from the Labor party at the ballot-box will meet, my committee believes, with the contempt it deserves at the hands of the people; but the advocacy of anarchial bloodthirsty policy of deliberately plunging the country into revolution and chaos on behalf of property interests, so cold-bloodedly foreshadowed and outlined by Mr Field, if the newspaper reports are accurate, will he, my committee fears, followed by the most disastrous social consequences if your Government allows it to pass unnoticed and permits such propaganda to he carried on. , Labor considers that faith in the accepted form of government as representing the paramount will of the people, will be destroyed if threats of armed revolt can be made with impunity. Citizens have already been sentenced to terms of imprisonment in New Zealand under the Crimes Act and under the War Regulations for utterances not one-hundredth part so subversive of law and order as those accredited to Mr Field. My committee desires to know what action, if any, Cabinet intends to take in the matter, or whether it is content to enforce one code of law for the representatives of Labor and another entirely opposite for the representatives of capital and property.