SOCIALISTIC ORATORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1085, 12 April 1913, Page 4

SOCIALISTIC ORATORY.

THE GREAT QUESTION

Scene : G.P.O. Square. Orator, large man, black whiskers, soft felt hat, flannel collar, red tie, standing on small stool, fiercely haranguing large but indifferent crowd.

Orator: “So what I say to you, comrades, is this : V ou the workers of this country—has slept, and slept soundly, the sleep of ignorance, the sleep of indifference, of apathy, far too long. It is time you woke up —woke up to a knowledge of the power that is in yopr bands waiting for you to use it—aye, asking you to use it. Woke up to a knowledge of your responsibilities responsibilities which you have constantly ignored— ■ which you continue to ignore. You must rouse yourselves, aud quit you like meu. If you mean to have your rights ip this world —and it you don’t want your rights you must be fools—you have got to take them with the strong hand. No one else will give them to you. And what are those rights ?, First of all, you have a right to the land. The land belongs to the people!” Voice frpm the crowd ; “We know that! Some belongs to some people and some to others.” Orator (with stern emphasis) : “My friend is trying to be witty. He only succeeds in being foolish. The land belongs—not to a few 'people—a favoured, pampered few, but to. the common people 5 to all the people. It belongs to me 1 it belongs to you. It’s ours !” Voice : “That’s all right then. What more do you want ?” . Orator (calmly explanatory) : “But can’t you see, my friend—or won’t you see. We haven’t got the land now, and w e haven’t got it because we’ye beep dope out of it.” ...

Voice from the crowd : “Then it isn t ours. You said just now that it was. You’re contradicting yourself.” Orator , (despairingly) : “My friend, wben. phe tries to bring a truth or an argument home to a

child or to a man whose intellect is uot bright, one has to use a parable or an illustration. Perhaps I cau make my point clear even to you if I tell you an anecdote. (Clears his throat and lifts up his finger impressively.) East Sunday a friend of mine—a navvy —was out walking in the country, and as he was crossing a field he met a swagger sort of gent., who sings out to him: “You can’t walk about here, my man—this is private property. This field belongs to me.’ “ ‘Belongs to you, does it?’ says the navvy. ‘Why, how did you come to get hold of it ?’ ‘lt was left to me,’ says the gent-, ‘by my father.’ ‘And where did your father get it from ?’ asks the navvy. ‘From his father, answers the gent. ‘And how did he come by it ?’• asked my friend. ‘His father left it to him. It has come down from father to son in our family for over five hundred years.’ ‘That’s all very nice,’ said the navvy, ‘but how did the first one get hold of it ?’ ‘Ob,’ says his nibs, high and mighty, ‘he fought lor it, and won it!’ ‘Right-o,’ says the navvy, ‘l’ll fight you for it,’ and he starts peeling off his coat. “Now, my Iriends, that’s the logic of the situation. If that’s right,and just, if the laud’s theirs because their ancestors fought lor it, then why isn’t it tight and j us for us to fight them for it and win it back again ? But we don’t want to fight. What we want is justice— ’’

Voice : “And not too much of that!”

Orator: “I want everything for the good and for the benefit of everybody ” Voice : “But you ain’t everybody !” Orator: “My friend, this is a serious subject—there is far too much nonsense talked about it.”

Voice: Just what I’ve been thinkin’.

Orator (irritably) ; “I can’t go on if this man in front is allowed to keep on interrupting. I have put before you once more, as I have been putting before you every Sunday morning for -the last two years, some of the great and pressing social and economic problems of the day, I have tried to help you to realise, comrades, that you are downtrodden and disinherited, and that it is time you woke up and demanded your own. “And now, friends, before I come and take a little collection for the good of the cause, if the seed has fallen on fruitful soil; if you have been interested in any of the important points I have put before you to day, and wish to ask me any questions,about them, ask me (drawing himself up and gazing defiantly round the crowd), and I’m here to answer you. What” —after a pause—“not one of you care enough about your own welfare and your own future to want to know some more ? Not one of you anxious enough to ask me a single, solitary thing ?” Small voice (excitedly deep in the crowd): “Yes, Ido !” Orator (rearing his head, and glaring truculently towards the sound): “Oh, you do! And who are you ? Come forward, my friend! Show yourself. Don’t be ashamed. You can’t ask me anything I’m not willing to answer. Now, then! Come! What is it ?”

(The crowd looks round, and down, and opens up, grinning and laughing, and a very small boy in knickerbockers is pushed through to the front. Speaker glares at him blankly.) Small Boy (shrill and keenly anxious) \ "I want to ask—-what I want to know is—did the gentleman have a fight with that navvy ?”

Orator (brusquely, amid chuckliugs of crowd): "No, my lad. He called a policeman. Henry" (stepping down, and turning abruptly to a colleague), "you take the stool. I’ll take the collection.”

—George Hott in "Sunday Chronicle,”