Thoughts For The Times.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 December 1919, Page 2

Thoughts For The Times.

n ” An illusion by Mr Buckeridge, Reform candidate for New Plymouth, to Mr Sernplc haying called himself a Bolly shevist elicited a flat contradiction from r- Mr P. B. Fitzherbert, the official Lav- bor candidate for Patea. 0. It may be worth while to reproduce rs the exact words used by Mr Semple: ce “We used to be called ‘Red Fed.,’ but nr now they .have a new name for us. They r- now call us Bolshevists. I accept the term. T glory in the Itussian workingal man’s pluck, and lam sorry that there i n is not more of it in New Zealand. If r _ I were in Russia 1 would be with Trot--3r sky and Lenin. If I were in Ireland I il_ would be a ,Sinn Feiner, and if I were in Germany I would be a Spartacist.” The occasion of this remarkable utterance was a meeting in Christchurch on lS February 16 last. s, Mr John Ward, a member of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, has been in Russia since the Bolshevist *" revolution occurred. Writing from :> ~ Omsk to Mr W. A. Appleton, secretary of the General Federation of Trade n Unions, he said: “For the love of Allah, never talk of the glories rf revolution. |C I am in it here.” A “However any o'f our Labour leaders 6 failed to grasp the Bolshevist creed of s blood, and presumed to condone the l - horrors committed by this mob of fan- *■' atical maniacs,” Mr Ward wrote, “I ° cahnoT imagine. Rather pray Heaven defend our country from such a calamo it v _ ... I quite believe it was is necessary to destroy the old regime, to execute the Czar and all its minions, r but these swine whom we call Bolshevists arc mere bloodthirsty cut-throats, who murder for the loyc of it as some of their proclamations show. Their V regime has destroyed more peasants i and poor people in one year than did , the Czars in a hundred. War is horrible, but revolution is hellish.”