THEN AND NOW.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 December 1919, Page 2

THEN AND NOW.

WAR TIME AND PEACE-TIME. Labor’s a’titude regarding the soldiers u war time and peace time is being lealt with by Mr W. Hughes, Federal Minister. In a recent speech at Sidney, Mr Hughes heaped scorn upon Lhe promises of the Labour party, made formally to the Returned Soldiers’ Impend League. “I call them the limit, ” ie said. “I never before saw so many lies in so few lines. These men who make these promises are tbe men who, when it was touch and go in March and April of 1918, when our boys were fighting desperately at Villers Bretonneux, were against recruiting, and were for peace by negotiation. Every soldier who was in France in those black days knows what it meant when those men turned their faces againsb our further participation in the war, and cried, “We cannot win—no more fighting—no more indemnities—peace by negotiation.” These are the men who were always against the soldier. And then they come along to you with these promises! Here is something that they wrote about you in 1915: Ye are the sordid killers. Who murder for a fee; Ye proplike rotten pillars, Trade’s lust and treachery . Hog-souled and dirty handed, Ye sell yourselves for gain, And stand for ever branded Red felons after Cain. . Ye are the “fools and flunkeys.” Ye die to serve the great: The rooks and gilded monkeys Who eat the fat of State, Ye fell in alien places, On foreign wastes ye lie; Stiff-limbed with putrid faces, Turned stinking to the sky. * This was published on January 14th, 1915, in the official organ of the Victorian Political Council. On Novem her sth, L. 919, the Labour manifesto said: “Our soldiers have proved l to the world that, they have no equals and few superiors.” There was no election in 1915, but there is one in 1919.