WILL CROOKS SPEAKS OUT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1630, 28 October 1916, Page 4

WILL CROOKS SPEAKS OUT.

Mr \V. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, has received the following letter from Mr Will Crooks, the well-known Labour member of Ihe House of Commons: —“The reasons Avhieh prompted me to support eonseriptiou would certainly not allow of militarism. The danger of becoming a Herman colony,'l he outrages on the women and children of Belgium, Ihe demand of the wives of the soldiers who had gone, (he cry of thousands of men -—‘We would go if everybody was compelled lo go.' There was nothing left for it hul eonseriptiou—for llie duration of the war only, not industrially, hut for lighting only. The cry of ;Your King and country need yon’ was not one whit more effective than Ihe cry of ‘Your wives, your mothers, and children demand yon.’ 1 have travelled nearly sixty thousand miles up and down the country since the war began, over the ground again and again, addressing absolutely millions of men and women industrial (oilers. Not one word of dissent was urged ihvonghonl the land. Mere and there a section who have absolutely no mandate have managed to gel into the press as objecting. They have been challenged again and again to test the feelings of their own constituents. They have not had the courage to face the music. Deeprooled in the hearts of the poorest of (he toilers is that we will suffer anything rather than suffer Prussian militarism to become our master. We are going lo win, lint we must have men. Whatever 1 roubles come upon the nation or are likely to come, we can deal with after the war. The war has first claim on Hie manhood of Ihe Empire."