NOTES OF THE DAY
An Auckland' member of Parliament interested in the formation of a new political party with progressive ideas is seriously recorded as denying a report in circulation that a leader and "a proposed new Ministry" had already been chosen. This reads rather as though someone had been counting his chickens prematurely. It will be quite time enough to choose a Ministry when the new party has won through at the elections and secured the majority necessary to enable it to hold office. At the same time, both Mb. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward, who apparently ay.e determined to go to the country on the old party lines, are liable to find their hopes and aspirations somewhat rudely disturbed by the activities of the new political organisation which is said to have gained adherents from the ranks of both the Reform and Liberal Parties. The country we believe would prefer to see a regrouping of political forces, and it is quite within tho realms of possibility that an organisation such as that which is being formed from the ranks of the more active and progressive elements in the present Parliament might capture popular sympathy and support and score a decisive win at the coming elections. Up to Hie present, however, too little is known of its policy and programme and of those_ behind it to enable a definite opinion t-o be formed as to its prospects.
There is a warning to the world, and incidentally to this Dominion, in a cablegram from London which appears to-day: "Medical authorities state that tho present influenza is more virulent than the earlier epidemic." It has already been pointed out on various occasions that past experience suggests tho possibility that the epidemic may recur; the news now transmitted from England shows that it sometimes recurs in a more dangerous form than it assumed at its first appearance. The trying experience of the Mother Country will not necessarily bo duplicated at this end of the world, but the occasion obviously is one for taking time by the forelock and leaving nothing to chance. For instanoe, visible facts ought to stimulate the Health authorities and local bodies in what-, ever measures they are taking or considering with a view to preventing tho re-importation of the disease or of eliminating conditions which would favour its spread should it make a second appearance. That organised measures are capable of much to check the onset of the epidemic seems now to be conclusively demonstrated in the experience of New South Wales, particularly when account is taken of tho muoh more serious ravages of the disease in Victoria, where less stringent precautions were enforced than in the neighbouring State. The authorities in New South Wales, it is reported to-day, are hopeful that the worst is now over. As jet this hope is of necessity tentative, but should it be verified, the case of Ncw_ South Wales will afford a striking object-lesson and present an example to bo copicd.
Some curiosity may have been aroused by the publication of a Press Association telegram yesterday which indicated considerable anxiety on the part of Me. R. SempLe, M.P., to convince the ActingPriiie Minister that Me. Ell, M.P., had done hjm an injustice. The facts of the matter are not without interest and Mr. Semple's anxiety is not difficult to understand. Mr. Sbmple, in pursuance of_ the political plan of campaign laid down ijy the Labour-Socialist Party, addressed a public meeting in Christchurch on Saturday evening, in the course of which he said many wild and rcckless things, including ' the following, taken from the report of the Lyttclton Times:
"Wo used to bo called the Red Feds, but now they have a new name for us. They call us now Bolsheviks. I accept the term. I glory in the Russian working man's pluck and I am sorry that there is not more of it in New Zealand.' If I were in Russia I would be with Trotsky and Lenin. If I were in Ireland I would be a Sinn Feiner; and if I were in Germany I would be a Spartacusian."
This declaration _of sympathy with the forces of disorder, revolution and bloodshed hardly met with the (sympathetic reception that its utterer expected. Indeed, so unflattering and emphatic were the newspaper comments that when Mr. Ell, a brother M.P., announced his intention of bringing Mr. Sempi,e's utterances under the notice of the Acting-Primb Minister, Mr. Semple hastened, as stated above, to inform the Minister that he had been misrepresented. What that alleged misrepresentation amounted to may be judged from Mr. Semple's public explanation made the following evening. What he had stated, he said, was that <; if he had been born and bred in Russia he would by the environment be forced to be a Bolshevik." Which no doubt will be very convincing (o Mr. Semple's friends.
It is suggested by a Christchurch paper that Mr. _ Semple's constituents, and especially the women, should find in their member's utterances food for reflection. They
should. Particularly will they admire Mr. Semple's regard io'r the Bolsheviks in the light of the disclosures made this week regarding the proclamation for the nationalisation of women, under which women are to become "national property" for the use of the men. Mr. Semple says the allegations that the Bolsheviks' have been guilty of murders, robberies, and the ravishing of women are all lies. No doubt the correspondents in Russia of the "Press of the world 'know less about what is happening in Russia .than Mr. Semple knows about it. No doubt Mr. Semple knows more about conditions in Russia than Colonel John Ward, ex-Labour member for Stoke-on-Trent, who has been through the thick of the Russian Revolution and who recently, writing from Russia to the Trades Unionist 'leader, Mr. Will Appleton, said: "How any of our Labour leaders have failed to grasp the Bolshevik creed of blood and have presumed to condone the horrors committed by this mob of_ fanatical maniacs I cannot imagine. . .
I believe it was necessary to destroy the old regime and to execute th" Tsar and his minions, but those swine whom we call Bolsheviki are mere bloodthirsty cut-throats who murder for the love of murder. Their regime has destroyed more peasants and poor people in a year than the Tsars did in a hundred' years. War is horrible, but revolution is hellish." Colonel the English Labour leader, on the spot in Russia, says these things about the Bolsheviks, but Mit. Semple, comfortably situated here in New Zealand, ten thousand odd miles awa.v, says they are lies. With the great bulk of the people of New Zealand Mr. Semple's opinions 1 count for so little that they would be hardly worth considering did he not profess to represent working class opinion. What has to be remembered, however, is that Mr. Semple and a small group- of reckless extremists holding similar views to his own are at of a political organisation which aims at securing the control of the Government of the country and dominating its affairs. And they are working desperately hard to attain their ends.
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Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 125, 20 February 1919, Page 4
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1,190NOTES OF THE DAY Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 125, 20 February 1919, Page 4
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