AN ATROCIOUS COMPARISON.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 20055, 15 April 1914, Page 4

AN ATROCIOUS COMPARISON.

Labour agitators of the extreme and blatant type are for their blasphemous utterances. We are convinced tho workers as a body have no sympathy with the loud-voiced and shameless-minded individuals who claim to bo their representatives. New Zealand has hud its shares of these harpies, and, throughout the length and breadth of Now Zealand to-duiy there- are thousands of men, women and children who have- been ruined as ji result of these rneu'n tenr-hing. One need do no more than recall some of the blasphemous speeches t)f agitators in Wellington during and precedent to the strike to shudder at the words which Mr. T. W. Mills uttered in Wellington on Easter Sunday night. Mr. Mills, who will be better remembered .as " Professor" Mills, spoke in Wellington on the subject: " Easter: Its Memories and its Promise —Peace and Goodwill a swift coming reality." During his discourse (a«cord-

ing to the "N.Z. Times" he describes Christ as "a Labour agitator, who went so far as to drive the moneychangers from the Temple and did the •work that Socialists are doing to-day. The Carpenter of Nazareth, too, received the same reward as the Labour agitator in a measure received nowadays." We do not class Mr. Mills with the worst type of agitator—at any rate so far as his language is concerned —but we venture to think his words will receive universal condemnation. To mention/ the name of Christ and "labour agitator" (in the ordinary acceptation of the term) is a horrible thing. Jn speaking of agitators we are not referring to that army of men who are nobly working for the betterment of their fellows, but to that class of men who, while ostensibly advocating the cause of the workers scoff at religion, and all that is hel dto be morally obligatory upon society. Men who have used language de-

nunciatory of things held sacred by decent men and women were conspicuous among the "labour agitators" "who engineered the recent strike. They were responsible, some of them, for the open advocacy of sabotage^ and they subscribed to the atrocious doctrine which found expression in the now notorious phrase "to hell with agreements." Mr. Mills has allied himself with these men, and knowing their, sentiments it ill becomes him to degrade the Divine AllLoving Saviour to their low level. He may say that he did not intend his comparison to* be so interpreted, but if that is his excuse he has yet to learn that in this Dominion bona

fide Labour leaders are not stigmatised as "agitators," and that in the common understanding of the people the men who are so styled fall far short of the Great Example.