THE RED FEDS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 November 1922, Page 4

THE RED FEDS

MR I SITUS ONSLAUGHT. Speaking at his political meeting in Christchurch last week, Mr Isitt spokestrongly against the Red Fed element in the coniitry. In the course of the address many extracts were read from the ‘•Maorilaiul Worker” to show that its policy, as the 11 oil Feds’ official organ. was to familiarise the members of the party with the idea of civil war. If they could not git what they aimed at hv peaceful means, they were prepared to use violent ones. Perhaps in nothing was the shameless, faithlessness of Red Fcdism so manifest as in its glorification of Lenin and Trotsky and the Russian Soviet 'Government. Messrs H. E. IloKand- Fraser and Co shrieked tin ir indignation in the name of liberty and free speech when the Government banned seditious hooks and prosecuted seditious speakers, but their official organ, “The Mnoriland Worker." almost deified Lenin, and they justified just as far as they dared his tyrannous and bloody rule. The speaker was antagonistic to the Red Feds because they were disloyal. They refused to do honor to the King, subjected the Prince, of Wales to vulgar abuse, flouted the Hag, villied everything British, ami aimed at creaking up tin* Empire, lie quoted from the “Maorilaiul Worker” a satire oil the National Anthem. He said: “In the name of all that’s right, if these men think in his way of this country, why don’t they got right out of it, and find liberty somewhere else? Take, also, their lying misrepresentations about the war. In the lace of evidence thatwon us the sympathy of two-thirds of the civilised world, these jaundiced libellers of their own land declare that Britain was as much to blame ns Pros-; sia.”

He was antagonistic to the i(<‘sl Feds because they adopted the must mischievous and subtle form of sabotage he knew of—go-slow. He wished I hat he had the ability to describe the dctcstible thing in adequate terms, in order that every decent man and woman might realise just what it meant, ami fight it as they would light the plague. The man who under cover of darkness sneaked into the engine-room of a big factory and threw a handful of steel nuts into the complex machinery was innocent compared with a man who, in order to win an economic victory over the capitalist, instilled in young pcpplif's minds principles .hat lie knew inevitably must work their ruin and destroy all sense of honour, all pride in industry, all right of ambition. everything on which character could bo luiilt. Ho was opposed to Red Fcdism because of its grossly materialistic and agnostic spirit, lie was not prepared to shut out God, nor to subsituto for New Testament guidance the “widpr Bibles of literature, nature and the human heart.”