ANOTHER INSTANCE OF EVASION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2929, 29 August 1925, Page 3

ANOTHER INSTANCE OF EVASION.

THE RED PARTY’S METHOD.

(To the Editor.)

Our experience of the socialist advocates belonging to the wrongly named ‘New Zealand Labour Party 1 is, that when they get faced with ’a definite question instead of honestly admitting that they cannot answer they become ill natured, abusive and personal. We respectfully invited Mr. B. Roberts to deny that his party advocates class consciousness, class war and class hatred, which is opposed to religious principle; also, that on occasions it acts on unconstitutional lines. It was he who had raised these issues. Instead of answering straight as man should, his last letter is but a further evasion and exhibition of ill spleen. His gag that our letters are not signed by an individual is only a shuffle. The “New Zealand Worker” articles are not signed by an individual, neither is the “leader” of any newspaper in the country. It is a stupid idea to think that the truth of an argument depends on who says so. To bring a question on to the purely personal ground is to prefer personalities before reason and common sense.

To show that we are not afraid of Mr. Roberts’s questions, and have no need to run away as he has done, we answer that the members of the Welfare League are any persons who choose to join under the constitution. There are several hundred members, and among them many who are farmers. The League issues a properly audited balancesheet which is open to all who subscribe to its funds. The President, Mr. C. P. Skorrett,. K.C., and other officers are well known men. Now, Mr. Roberts says the members of his party are honest and straightforward. Let us put to him the question: Does he mean to suggest that the members of the Welfare League are not honest and straightforward : Tf that is what he means then he should say so straight out and not suggest by innuendo that the League is a secret society, which il is not, and that its members are in some way crooked, which is a false suggestion. That style of abusing by mean suggestion and innuendo is not worthy of anyone who claims to be straightforward —it is contemptible. Part of your correspondent’s letter deals with the - land question in a very loose way. Whilst he recites some of the farmers’ troubles be does not prove that his party has any practical solution for the problems with which the farmers are faced. He says the working farmers have been asking him what “that £270 millions of mortgages represent.’’ Me do not believe that the farmers are so stupid as not to know that much of the mortgages represent capital which many could not do without. To talk of all mortgages as a burden is the silly talk of city socialists. Mortgages in many instances are loan capital which’ helps the struggling settler to reach a position he could never otherwise attain. It is so easy to promise the farmers heaven if they will only vote “Labour,” but the farmers in Australia, where there are Labour Party Governments, are no better off than the farmers of New Zealand. Mr. Roberts might inform us where he picked up the fairy tale about Soviet Russia. “Land given free and butterfat produced at 4d per lb. in Siberia.” It is a wonder Mr. Roberts does not pack up and go to such a paradise instead of struggling here as a working farmer under the iron heel of capitalism. Why, in New Zealand he confesses that he cannot find time to answer the Welfare League’s piffle,” whereas in Siberia he would have time to write volumes. Still, we do not expect Mi'. Roberts will go. After paying his taxes to the Soviet Government and observing all its decrees he would find the land so dear as to wish himself back in free New Zealand. In a liax camp or shearing shed that Siberian story would be met with the retort “don’t talk rot.” The arm ehaii- critic in Wellington may have done as much “hard graft” in his time as Mi’. Roberts and know just what political piffle means. There is one thing the colonial dislikes and that is the habit of evading and side-stepping a straight issue. Me are, Yours Etc.,

N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE,