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Hokitika Guardian, 9 April 1927, Page 2

•1 isr at this time when there is the promise of an upheaval in regard i the trade union legislation of the 15litis 1 1 (lovornmcnt, it was rather appro--1 priate that one of the Labor leaders 1 in particular should be preaching the > gospel of peace. As a contemporary . remarks “It is to be hoped that the sermon preached by .Mr Frank Hodges in Coventry Cathedral oil Sunday appealed to a large and sympathetic audience. .Mr Hodges, as one of the best known and nest widely trusted of British Labour leaders, and as secretary of the International Miners’ Federation, occupies a position of exceptional authority in the industrial world, and his appeal for peace should carry conviction to many thousands of men and women who have entrusted their industrial fortunes to his care There is nothing particularly novel about this new economic gospel. Mr Hodges himself has always held oid against the doctrine of the necessary antagonism between Labour and Capital, so assiduously preached by the Marxists and the C'omin ini. ts. To say that the interests of Capua! anJ Labour, the employer and the wageearner, are mutually opposed in certain I respects is to state an obvious fact. But to insist that these classes are therefore divided by a chasm that can never be bridged, and tlia f the “flats war’’ thus inaugurated, must be followed out, if necessary by violent means, to a logical conclusion, is to deny the possibility of security, stability or I peace for all the world at once and for ever. It is against this fanatical perversion of an economic truism that Air Hodges has protested, and we trust that his appeal will not pass wTToTIv unregarded. It is a remarkable proof of the demoralising effects of dogmatism that so many Labour leaders who denounce all other wars as “capitalistic” and unholy should bind themselves irrevocably to the prosecution of that cruellest, most vindictive and most unjust of all crusades, the “class war.”