RECENT ACTIVITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 14

RECENT ACTIVITIES

A FINANCIAL DRIVE

A statement dealing with recent activities o£ the Wellington division of the New Zealand Legion has been forwarded to "The' Post" by the secretary (Mr. D. M. Robertson). It reads as follows:— "The activities of the Wellington Division of the New Zealand Legion during the last week have covered a wide range and meetings of various kinds havo been held. In addition, our special sub-eom-mitteos dealing with the question of the completion of the plan of the reform of the governmental system and also for the direction of economic thought within the division have met and outlined a course of action. "A financial drive is producing satisfactory results and arrangements are in hand for an increased membership effort, the main objective being the provision of facilities for people employed in the city who have not so far been able to make contact with the organisation. "Considerable discussions have taken place at meetings over the necessity of filling the gaps in the governmental plan, the main objective of the Legion, and dealt with at the last national council meeting, ,and have resulted in the weight of evidence brought forward by . Legion speakers being satisfying to members and non-members. This gradual acceptance of the foundation principle of the Legion., that nothing can be effected from any angle,- including the economic angle, without competent government or the alternative —mob rule followed by autocracy—is very pleasing to the leaders of the movement. "Speakers at various meetings are gaming ground because of the gradual accept 4 ance of the principle of decentralisation of control. One speaker recently pointed out that because all government commenced with autocracy, all government would return to autocracy, unless the electors took the stand that the liberty of democracy was a sacred trust, to be proserved from the licence of mob rule inevitably followed again by autocracy. He further showed that • (he marvellous effort made by the people of Russia had resulted, not in the obtaining of liberty, but simply in the changing of. one form of autocracy to another; whilst Italy, professedly in the hands of Socialists and secminsrly without mlequnte leadership, had allowed her people to become dominant as a mob, again resulting in a return to autocracy. "It can bo safely said that pending tho development towards a majority opinion on economic reconstruction in the country, the Xew Zcalanil Legion as a national organisation must firstly ■ convince the people of tho necessity of our errors being corrected from the groundwork upwards, before they may be corrected from the point of view of economics." THE TRADE DEPRESSION. A lecture based on a book recently published in England by Mr. Frederick _ S. Holsinger. an English economist, was given at a meeting of the Xew Zealand Legion last evening by Mr. Evan Parry. Mr. A. W. Free presided. The subject dealt with by the author irai "The Mystery of the Trade Depression." and the reading of the extracts by Mr. Parry was _ followed with close attention by an audience of over fifty people. A discussion followed the lecture.