Page 9 Advertisements Column 2

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 15, 16 June 1911, Page 9

I In Our Opinion.

there be«n an organised and! -"- . persistant attack upon Compulsory Military training it had never been:, forced upon the* workers of this Dominion If there is from now on to and. at the elections a persistent and organised attack upon Compulsory Military Training it may be repealed. It may be repealed; if no effort is made, it will reign triumphant ior years and probably longer. For repeal it is now or never, >or thereabouts. Are there a thousand men with. 5s in earnest enough to make a big effort for repeal■> A hundred-thousand "Down with Conscription" WoEKEfi, and who knows with, what gra,nd outcome. Agitation; has killed bigger enactments than Ward's 'conscription measure. Ervery Socialist, every industrialist, every pro--pagandiet, knows the value of printer's* Wherever it had been scattered. Debs vote for U.S.A. presidency was largest. So in numerous instances. Yoth Socialists who want a Social Revolution; you industralists who want-Eman-cipation—how are you going to get 'iJ without effort? Inevitable, yes—but the* work for it also inevitable. 'Tis "we few against the world" —The Worker and tne men and women it speake for—* but effort! effort! ! effort! ! ! this • hag n ade the working-class movement. Altogether, for a, • one-hundred-thousand. number. Qiickly.

WORKERS in the sugar fields <rf Queensland are being treated like the Kanakas of slavery days. Ben. Tillctt is right about their conditions. Billy Hughes ie -wrong. The Amalga-n-ated Workers' Association of Queensland supports Tillett. It knows. Its organisers and "Q. Worker" reveal outrageotis conditions. The association ssktd the planters, growers and millers to meet it in conference, but has beerc churlishly refused the conference. There vas nothing for it but to cease work or be dumb-driven cattle. So there is ai strike, as the papers* have chronicled. May the men win. Stand by them.

"~V7"B'T room for war, and conseqti- -*- ently for military training" says the Rev. Wells-Smailes of Waihi. To be fair to the parson, he conditions hie war. War for peace, liberty, brotherhood, civilisation—not for trade, oppression, wrong and the spread of Empire. Thus has all -war been excused. The South African war, the Crimeanwar, the Chinese opium war —all were fanned in the name or liberty. And knoAving this, the workers increasingly make Avar upon -rear. They have been btirnt in ±he furnace of pain, have learnt that the making , of professional ■warriors ends in the deliberate and) scxighc exercise of the profession. Mr. Wells-Smailes does, violence to his conscience when he strains it to see in compulsory military training an obedienceto the Sixth Commandment. Peace, ha s-ays, is an ideal we have not reached— fcmt will hunianity ever reach 4t -until it practices it?

nPUTE Coronation investiture is solemn- -*- ly described and det/ended in a leading: article in "Otago Daily Times." The whole thing , reads sillier than the silly. There are to be oaths, anointings, cries of "May the King live for ever" —Lord. forbid for even a King so terrible a fate!—and of course the Bible, which is to be presented to the Sovereign as "the most valuable thing that th:« world afi'ords." Thousands of "loyal" Rationalists will condone this i.e. Ts the Bible moro than happiness, joy, sunshine, health, literature, aj r, hunuirity? Then, there- arc-to be stoles, orbs, robes, cross, crown, "per annulum et bacuHini," and (w© quote, literally): "The King's heels are touched with the great golden sprirs, and he- is gdrt with the sword, which he afterwards tlTots i pon the altar, where it is redeemed hy the payment of a hundred shillings andi carried naked before his Majesty." And! to think that Andrew Fisher, erst iriner and now Labor Prime Minister, vill see it —in knee breeches !

N.S.W. Chief Secretary Donald Macdonell (says Melb. "Labor Call") is among the few who have boon able to read notices of their own death. In fact, he can also read a resolution expressing regret at the untimely occurrence, passed by tho Albury Municipal Council. Almost ever since the Labor Ministry was formed the strong man of the A.W.U. has been physically a sick man; and, though ho has improved a trifle lately, his condition is still serious.