THE CONFERENCE AND CONSCRIPTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2680, 28 January 1916, Page 4

THE CONFERENCE AND CONSCRIPTION

The outcome of the so-called Labour Conference which has been sitting here to consider the question of conscription is made known this morning in the form of one of those extravagant manifestoes with which the Federation of Labour has mado us familiar. It is a pathetic production. Reading it one might well feel uneasy for the fate of the Empire in the war, if any material section of the people were as hopelessly blind to the issues at stake and as utterly incapable of rising to the magnitude of the occasion as those who composed' this alleged expression of the opinions of Labour. The manner in which the Conference was summoned made it a fore gone conclusion that it would decide 1 against conscription, but would any sane person have imagined that it would put forward as a reason that because all could not go ipto the fighting lines owing to some being required for essential industries, none 1 should be compelled to go? In other words, because all cannot be spared to go. none should be compelled to go. And then again, does any intelligent person in the community honestly believe that conscription is intended (as stated in the manifesto) not so much to win thi _ war as to_ hold the workers in subjection during 'the critical afterwar period ? Is not such an assertion an insult to the intelligence of the workers, and. most arrant humbug? If conscription would mean this subjection of Labour, why does Mr. Henderson, the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in England, support it: and why does Mr. .Hughes, the Labour Prime Minister of Australia, undertake to adopt it if necessary? Do the delegates who endorsed the manifesto drawn up for them really think that labour unionists or the public generally are to be fooled by such rubbish? To crown the folly and add to tho insult the composers of the manifesto drag in a German Socialist, above all people, to champion their views, and they pretend _to compare the system of conscription in Germany with what has been suggested in various parts of . the British Empire to meet the emergency of the war and for the duration of the war only. Conscription may not prove to be necessary in New Zealand, but if 110 sounder reasons against it can be advanced than the wild nonsense set out in this manifesto then there is indeed little objection to it. There are one or two points in the document in relation to pay and pensions which are not out of place. They are not new, and the Conference has merely stressed what has already been widely discussed in tho Press and elsewhere. What must strike the public generally and the moderate section of Labour in particular, however, i is tho inability of the Federation of Labour to bring itself into harmony with public sentiment and to lay aside, even in so terrible a time of national, crisis, that bitter class _ feeling which so disfigures all it attempts. Instead of seeking to assist to weld the community together against the enemy abroad it seeks' to sow dissension by wild attacks on "the capitalistic class" and the advocacy of State Socialism. Instead of throwing its energies into the struggle to maintain the liberties_ and privileges all enjoy under British rule, and which are threatened by _ Germany's outrageous ambitions, it wastes its in mischievous peace talk which will only encourage our enemies they ever come to learn of it. It would be unwise to take the Federation _ of Labour as seriously representing the views of- Labour on tho subject of tho war. It not only docs not represent the real sentiment which actuates Labour, but it had not the courage to allow the questions raised at tho Conference just closed to be discussed in public. It dared not disclose the extent of the opposition in its own ranks to the extravagant views of the small band ! of extremists who sway its counsels. No good purpose, eithor for Labour or for the country, has been served by the Conference, unless it is that it has further I emphasised the weakness of the caso of those who oppose conscription.