NOT FOR LIBERTY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3607, 1 March 1927, Page 4

NOT FOR LIBERTY.

W|HAT THE RED MENACE

MEAN'S. In this article we are not going to invite anyone to see Reel, although where there is danger looming it is well, that the persons affected should not he colour blind and unable to distinguish the red sign when they see it. It is stated by experts that there are people whose vision is such that they cannot recognise the colour of red when used as a signal and accidents occur on account of this visual defect. Qur purpose is to have readers'look some truth straight in the face and recognise is as the truth. There is an impression in many minds that the bolshevik revolution in Russia was simply a revolt of the masses in favour of liberty. So long as people hold this idea that bolshevism, is a movement towards liberty they arc disposed to pass ov#r its murderous influence throughout the British Empire. Talk ot the mastery of bolshevism in Mongolia, where it has overrun the country, or i.ts present hold on the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, and your hearers probably are not disturbed because they think the. whole movement is. one for liberty which unfortunately sometimes takes the form of license. The first fact, then, we, wish to present is that bolshevism is not a movement for liberty but is based upon the principles of dictatorship and expressed in a rule of tyranny and oppression. Lenin in 1920 said: — “Wie have never spoken of liberty. We exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat in the name of a minority, because the peasant class in Russia is not proletariat, and is not yet with us. We shall exercise the dictatorship over them until they submit.” Trotsky in his book “Defence of Terrorism,” adds the following:— “Democracy is a worthless and wretched masquerade:—We repudiate democracy in .the napie of the concentrated power of the proletariat. Three times over hopeless is the idea of coining to power by the path of parliamentary democracy. There is only one way —to seize power.”

The 'farming class of New Zealand should note the attitude of the Reds, there expressed,\ to the peasants —“We shall exercise the dictatorship over them until they submit.” Lenin in one of his pronouncements, referring to the same subject of liberty, said “freedom is a bourgeois superstition.” Liberty is clearly repudiated by the Bolsheviks —and what is put in its place? The plan that is substituted was adopted from the teaching of Karl Marx and is styled “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Who are the proletariat? In Russia —not the peasants, who constitute 70 per cent, of the population. Plainly the proletariat are those only whom the party in power recognise as such. In any case dictatorship takes the place of liberty.

THE REIGN OF TERROR. Where this abrogation of liberty leads is best described in another extract from Trotsky’s work: — “W]c are not engaged in statically reflecting a majority, but in dynamically creating it. The proletariat will have to kill. There will be a determined life, and death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; it will be a merciless civil war.” “History shows that there is no other way of breaking the class will of the enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence.” “Revolution is founded upon intimidation —it kills indiviThus a conscious minority dynamically converts itself into a majority 'by slaying its main opponents and terrorising the rest.” These writings surely tell us in the plainest terms what the Red menace means. Instead of being a movement of liberty it is one of tyranny governed by an ideology of party absolutism. As religious fanatics of old, believing their views to he the whole truth, were ready to murder and destroy for their faith, so the Bolsheviks justify all crime against human beings provided it advances their creed of political absolutism. They are the enemy of liberty, therefore, the greatest danger of our generation. , (Contributed by the N.Z. Well are League).