BRITISH LABOUR AND RUSSIA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 141, 10 March 1919, Page 6

BRITISH LABOUR AND RUSSIA

In addressing the Social Democratic Party last evoning in Alexandra Hall, Mr. W. D. Bayley said that the downfall of the Tsar had been heralded by every class of society, in Britain, but latterly a feeling of fear and apprehension seemed to be spreading through the land lest the terrible happeniugs in Russia should be repeated throughout tho world. The speaker pointed out that after allowing for a possible one-sidedness of reports and recognising that revolutions of tho past now recognised as good has had their dreadful features, yet there was no doubt that Russia was in a terrible turmoil. But the thing to be remembered was that these terrible happenings were tho harvest sown by the oppression of the old Russian autocracy. It was to be hoped that the Allied Governments would sympathetically handle tho Russian problem.

Mr. Bayley then pointed out that there was an essential difference between the democratic movement in Britain and in Russia. Russia had no popular education and ; practically no ballot. Both these were now the inheritance of Britisli workmen, and, therefore a resort ; to force or violence was unthinkable. It would he morally wrong and practically futile. Long before the workers could be organised for an armed demonstration they would have by constitutional methods and the intelligence secured by schooling used their political inheritance for their emancipation. The war had shown that when faced with an immense task the Government turned from pTivato enterprise to Stele control. Men put on the uniform at small pay to serve their country. Tlio nation was organised from end to end. Food was distributed on the basis of need and not according to ability to purchase. Public welfare took precedence over privnto profit fo some extent at least. These principles, so necessary in war, would be applied in the struggle to eliminate poverty and ushor in the .better day ahead. Mr. Bayley referred, in closing, to (lie relationship of Christianity and .Socialism, and also tlio attitude 'of a Socialist us lie saw it to Ihe Prohibition issue. The Church was i ot r,n innurmountable obstacle, as seme thought. As a matter of fact, the Church ivas ripening for a better social or«!»r finite as rapidly as. were the workers themselves. History showed that the Church had always proved a bulwark of the State and would no doubt be the same for the. co-operative | commonwealth. The speaker had recently received a most satisfactory hearing from tlio annual gatherings of two large denominations in New Zealand. Allowing for the discrepancies between Christianity and Churchianity, the task of reform was not to break, but to capture. the moral power generated bv the teachings of brotherhood latent in New Testament ethics. As to Prohibition, the speaker pointed out that as Socialists ivere out against profiteering of all kinds, they could hardly support the meanest form of capitalism. namely, Ihe Trade, which paid but half the proportion of wages that other trades paid and then gave the consumers a commodity of no value. Socialism proposed to bring all industry to Hie test of sen-ice and not profit. How could it, then, stand for a trade that was all profit and no use. Whatever might be ™id against Socialism, it. was cleaT Socialists were idealists, and therefore were against a traffic which brought a trial of suffering, poverty, crime, and sorrow. For Chronic Chest Complaints, Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.*