WAR-TIME ECONOMY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 171, 9 April 1918, Page 7

WAR-TIME ECONOMY

Sir, —I think the following very ; forcible sermon is well worth publica- \ iion as pertinent and • apropos to , transpiring events in Now Zealand: — i Kecently in the West Ohuroh, ■Aberdeen, the Rev. S. H. Donald, in i'ithe course of a sermon on "Facing the j Facts," said: "Any effort at economy was still ■ tho last thing some people ilnade. They-gave their sons and friends /gladly to the war, but they complained [bitterly when asked to stand in a queue I for butter. They maligned, the Food [ Controller, and forgot -the hardships j of the men on the sea who guarded our .shipping and gave their lives that we 'might have food. Amid the folly and indifference, and because of it, there loomed always very fearful the possibil- '■ ity. of defeat, or such orippling of ovx • resources that centuries would ):ot correct. 'As they faced the fact of war and what it entailed it Lecatno diffioult k> understand and submit to the mutinous and unpatriotic conduct of certain sections of Labour to-day. None of them had any animus agaiust ■Labour. Tho working man deserved and got the respect of all, none more Eo than. he. And it was satisfactory , to he told that tho would-be strikers

only represented a small section of Labour, and nob by any means the main body. They did liofc represent either tho nation or the majority of trade unions, or even tho majority of their own society. Who were they, then? Were they shirkers, wore they pacifists, were they Bolsheviks? As far as he could gather they were a blend of all three, with Lenin and Trotsky thrown in. They were the men who were fugitives from military i ecossity, who rushed into tho covert of munition factories and shipbuilding yards to escape obligations of a military kind, not as trained men, but unskilled, now getting high wages, and believing they had a stake in tho country and a right to dictate terms of their own. Those were the men who vere to-day declaiming against our leaderssowing treason in the hearts of the people—clamouring for .the removal of men who had opposed their privileges, openly spoke of Russian revolutionaries as 'comrades,' of the Bolsheviks as the 'saviours' of Europe. Jn this crisis it behoved everyone to jaise his voico in vehement protest against such cction. These men, while they might have a few grievances that ought to be redressed, were nevertheless grossly undemocratic, wholly selfish, and a menace to the Empire. There might be a case for pacifism, but there ras no cose for revolution. There was no case for a privileged few who were a law unto themselves and would resign the interests of tho country to revolutionaries and anarchists, and they must make their voices heard against them, as a band of young apprentices in Aberdeen had done. We could not allow them to bring disrepute on Labour, Britain, or Christianity."—l am, etc., VETERAN. Wellington, April 8, 1918.