LABOUR MEMBERS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15836, 5 June 1919, Page 5

LABOUR MEMBERS.

MODERATE AND EXTREME OPEN LETTER TO MR HOLLAND. (From our Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, June 5. The statement of Mr W. A. Veitch, M.P, for Wanganui, to his constituents in regard to the extremists in the Labour Party was the subject of criticism by Mr H. Holland, member for Grey, at a recent meeting under the auspices of the Labour Party in Wellington. This has brought the Wanganui member again into the arena, and he has written the following open letter to Mr Holland; — “In your statement on Sunday regarding myself you make several charges. Boiled down, my offences are:— 1. That I made an attack on you; 2. Supported the Military Service Act. 3. Refused to vote with you against the disfranchisement for 10 years of the conscientious objectors. With respect to No. 1, let me describe the attack in my own way. Since the passing of the Military Service Act, 1914, I have stopped your bullets, fired from behind the shelter of the editorial desk, and during all that time I have taken It cheerfully, hever defending myself against your vituperation—indeed, I do not remember even having mentioned your sacred name. You succeeded in working your underground scheme at Wanganui, while on the surface you claim to have been working harmoniously with me in Parliament, and when I mildly say you are ‘temperamentally impossible,’ you complain—with the convenient imagination you have—that I am attacking you. You are not now an editor, but out in the open trench of political warfare, and must get over the sandbags as others do, and stop a bullet now and then. No amount of squirming will spare yon this, so my advice is to take it cheerfully and not be supersensitive about trifles. Point No. 2.—You complain that I supported the Military Service Act. This is the real basis of your uncontrollable passion. I supported the Act because I honestly believed in it. You wore honest in your opposition to it if you believed it to be wrong, yet according to your reasoning I was dishonest in supj)orting it altliongli I believed it to be right. In other words, tee champion of tee conscientious objectors denies me the privilege of a conscience. Point No. 3 is that I cast a vote for the Expeditionary Forces Amending Bill which provided for (1) the abolition of conscription; (2) bonus to' soldiers of the Expeditionary Force, which amounted to over a million of money: (3) disfranchisement of military defaulters, with exemption of religions objectors. You had your chance to divide the House in Committee on tee clauses providing for the disfranchisement of military defaulters. You let that opportunity pass, and then in a frenzy of chagrin you demanded of me that I should vote with you against the whole Bill. I refused to vote against bonuses for soldiers who fought for you and me and the conscientious objectors. Do you really believe that there is a conscience other than that of tee negative conscience? I have not heard you, with your well-known platform cunning, extol the positive consciences of those men who fought for yon and me, Mr Holland—aye, died for you and me and onr women-folk —because their consciences told them they should defend their country and thus make it possible for us to live under tee protection of its laws. Nor have I heard your eloquence in appreciation of tee courageous women who suffered without complaint in tortures of desperation and anxiety for their, country's sake in her hour of dire necessity.

In short, to disagree with yon, the self-appointed Kaiser of the Labour movement, is to be disloyal to Labour. Mr Holland, you are “temperamentally impossible.”—l am, etc., W. A. VEITCH.