COMPULSION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1579, 20 July 1916, Page 2

COMPULSION.

CERTAIN extreme Labour agitators —who, by the way, should have ere this, been interned with the Germans on Somes Island for their disloyal utterances —have had a great deal to say against compulsory military service. They have succeeded in compromising hundreds of trades union members who do not hold with them, but who remain quiet for peace sake, for they know the price they would pay for opposing satellites of the extremists. Anyhow, union members are compromised by disloyal utterances and acts of their executive. Unionism is alright within sane bounds,

and no fair-minded employer objects to unionism, but do not members of unions realise Hint compulsory membership is the fundamental ground upon which these leaders declare unionism exisis. If it were not for compulsion, agitators know full well they would have to work for a living instead of fattening on union members as parasites. But when (he constitution of tiic State is in danger and the Empire is at death grips lighting for its very existence, and a tcmpoi’ary compulsion in military mailers is essential to victory, these one-eyed agitators rise up and condemn and oppose a principle which they claim as of vital importance to unionism. If national compulison, under the present critical circumstances in the history of Ihe State is wrong, then compulsion is wrong all the lime as applied to industrial unionism.