No Mandate!

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 25, 25 August 1911, Page 3

No Mandate!

Soldier and SSave. By FRANK FREEMAN. (Secretory -Socialist Party, Wellington) Interested persons loudly and lyingly. proclaim that full and free Democracy exists in New Zealand. With no expressed mandate from the people of this country, Parliament has imposed upon our youth the Compulsory Military Training Act. Like the wily Jesuits, they seek to capture the child with its impressionable mind. Jingoistic ideas, the glamour ■"of military trappings, and brutal savage instincts of dominance Will all find *' big field for operation. An army- to be any uso at all must • have "good" soldiers. The imported drill instructors, efficient in tiro art of bullying and crushing out every trait of independence of the private soldier ' can. be relied upon to carry this out. The boy to be beloved by the officers will be the one who most blindly obeys his so-called superior. This best officer is he who blindly obeys one of higher rank. In the last stage of.blind obedience the. ideal com mander. is. one who awaits orders from somebody else. That "somebody else" is tho personal expression of the requirements of a useless class living cm Kent. Interest, and Profit. This trinity of, evil has been the cause of every war during the past century. To-day this facb is being more and more known. Only a fool or a knave can. be gulled with the idea that an army is to protect a country's _ honour, tho people's homes, or national institutions." At any time" national honour can be sullied by military despotism. Some of the homes of t\w>-wage-workers arc inferior to that of a stable. Our national 'institutions' have in the main been built upon, and' are being, supported by the slowly drawn-out torture of the meicikss capitalist system. Martial law will reign supremo with the conscript army of New Zealand. Drumhead courtmartials for so-called offences against discipline—in. other words, the refusing to sink ones man-_ hood—will bo the order of the day. Trial by jury has no room in the army. The military martinet, glorying in the goose-step and the snow-like whiteness of pipe-clay, will be a permanent institution. Democracy does not count. One end,, one aim, one desire. Crush out individuality. Glorify the -righteousness of pulling a trigger against another man ■ because ordered to do so. To teach our children .such legalised murder, to have them grow m> with ithe taint of militarism thick upon them,- is giving hostages, to tho mad passions of barbaric blood lust. No! there is growing up an organisation amongst the workers of NewZealand which fis teaching -them -who their real enemies are. Not only in this country, but in every country, are our brothers and sisters struggling against all forms -of- oppression to bring the only true working-class principles to the top. . ■ Wherever a soldier exists thero is his counterpart the slave. With .men _ and women free from the power of Capitalism/despotism and slavery cease. Where all are free no armed force is needed to protect the right to live, to think, and to enjoy the wealth so easily and abundantly produced. With such conditions there would bo something worth defending. At the present time, the Compulsory Training Act is but the beginning of militarism. It mean's those who have already been.. robbed forced .to! defend what they havo been robbed of in order that it might not fall .into the_ hands of'a 'different set of robbers. This is the truth, and the Socialists and Industrial Unionists of New Zealand refuse to recognise the -least justice in such infamy.

Socialist agitators say . that one who, in full work, upon a summer's evening, accepts their "teaching' is worth a dozen who at a. strike, upon a winter's day, hungry and desperate, come a<nd enrol their names-