STRIKE MAD

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3065, 28 April 1917, Page 8

STRIKE MAD

The latest strike of State coal miners passes all limits. These men .arrogate to themselves the right to override the law, to set at defiance the War Regulations, to break faith on the flimsiest of pretexts, and to prejudice the interests of the whole country as tho mood of tho moment prompts them. Their latest defiance of law and authority is based on their refusal to conform to the railway restrictions rendered necessary by the exigencies of the war. It is nothing to them that- men are fighting and dying for the liberties and freedom they'enjoy; it is nothing to them that the whole country's forced to suffer similar inconvenience and loss owing to the necessity for readjusting our railway arrangements; it is nothing to them that the small sacrifices those who have not gone to the fighting lines arc called on to bear are the merest trifles compared with what our countrymen in Britain. and the people of our Allies arc making. Because some smaH concession which they in common with other people have been accustomed to is of necessity cut off they break the law, injure their fellow-workers throughout the Dominion, aiuKcripple so far as lies within their _ power tho efforts of New Zealand in the war. Tho State coal mines have been for long a breeding-ground of disaffection and industrial turmoil. They arc a centre of plotting and mis-chief-making and seditious teaching. More injury has been dono to the legitimate claims of _ organised labour through tho evil promptings which have emanated from tho vicious and lawless group which has gathered in this community than from any other cause. Those who reside on tho West Coast know this; the Government know it; and themajority of tho Labour unionists oE tho Dominion know it. Now a number of these men have once more broken tho Jaw and broken it in a manner which they know must do injury to all classes. They aro strike mad and reckless .of whom thoy may injure. What we want to know and what the country . will • want to know is wbat the Government intend to do about- it. If ever lawbreakers should be made to feel tho full power and weight of the law these men' should..