The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1931. A NOISY RABBLE.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 August 1931, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1931. A NOISY RABBLE.

The referendum on the proposal to dissolve the. Prussian Diet was taken on Sunday, and it resulted in a decisive defeat for the opponents of constitutional government. But this plebiscite was made the occasion for violent inciting in Berlin, organised appar. ently with great care and deliberation by the Communists. They were attacked with tanks, searchlights and machine guns, and order was eventually restored- But the bloodshed is sure to leave much bitterness behind it, and the Communists are certain to try again. Meantime, their chief adversaries, the Nazis, have fallen under suspicion of complicity with a sensational outrage, the attempt to blow up the Swiss German express. Of course, the Nazis have quite vehemently repudiated any connection with the affairs. But the fact remains that in the present chaotic condition of German political and national life violent crimes can be plausibly attributed to both revoutionary factions in turn. Though the Communists believe in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and the Hitlerites are aiming at the establishment of an absolute autocracy of a very different type, there is no doubt that these two parties between them include a large proportion of the rising generation that has been growing to manhood since the Great War. According to an analysis of the situation which appeared in a recent issue of the ‘‘Economist,” the worst danger that Germany faces to-day lies in the large number of academically trained young professional men who, having qualified as lawyers and engineers and doctors, “find themselves stranded as an unemployed intellectual proletariat.” Disillusioned and exasperated by their lack of opportunity and the humiliations which their 'country has endured, they are ready to

strike out desperately at all existing forms of social and political life. “Hit back at ‘the Government, the capitalists, the foreigners, the Jews!—no matter so long as we strike a blow.” This is the spirit of pessimistic gloom which breeds revolutions everywhere, and it is from these large classes of discontented “intellectuals” that the two opposing forces, the Nazis and the Communists, are chiefly recruited today. The same cry is raised to day in most countries where there is a discontented 1 element so often ill-led. There are those who seek to produce a state of chaos. It is noticeable also in industry where this noisey rabble first rears its head. There it is able to enlist or coherse converts, and so the noise grows. Their leaders rail against the powers that be, who can do no good according to their lights, but by their methods they win all audience, and have to he heard. AH too often they insist oil pulling down, rather than attempt to build up. Their remarks are invariably critical and iiever constructive. They see no good hi anything not of their own coming, and preach dissatisfaction and opposition. These noisy rabbles are appearing in most countries, and in the public interests it is not wise to give them too great a foothold in public life. This word is perhaps in season at this juncture, seeing that New Zealand is approaching a general election.