Heard and Said

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 78, 6 September 1912, Page 1

Heard and Said

That Greed is the scarlet sin of the I modern Babylon which we call Society. That because a few are greedy, a million are needy. That George Washington's boyhood deed with the tomahawk, immortalised in song and story, has to take a back sent in these day 3of militant suffragette tactics. That the thins he did with his little hatchet is not a circumstance to the deeds of British suffragettes with their baby axes. That the spirit of the Father of the American Republic must be hovering over Great Britain in a state of restless envy. That, according to the "Sunday Times," the wharfies are the stormy petrels of Labor in Sydney. That a Conservative member of the British House of Commons said the recent great coal strike was due to "mischievous and maleficent utterances of mendacious Ministers." That Australia's own John Norton will h»T« to look to his laurels as a master of "•tftMtpproachable alliterative English. That President Taft has signed a Bill for the creation of an Industrial Commission throughout the United States to investigate the conditions governing labor. That the investigation is to be undertaken with a view to the establishment of amicable relations between Capital and Labor. That the consummation of such a contract is an impossibility while Capital is the wp'°' ter Labor the exploited. That some queer things are reported in the daily press. That in one paper we read that "the lady left her hotel in a motor-car," and a headline informs us that a man was "shot in the suburbs." That a startling item of information is that ''he kissed her passionately , upon h„er return." : " ' ~*T . ^.,.wl |a I.,_\r, . ' ' .Tones walked in on hi r 'nvitation." and that "she fainted upon his departure." (Chat the value of "Hansard" to the electors would be considerably yieater thnn it is if it Wore an authentic record of what members actually did say. That it is notorious that "Hansard" docs not contain the record of what members really said on any given occasion. That, on the contrary, it is a record of what they subsequently think they ought to have said or would like to have said, if they had had a little more time to think the matter over. Thnt the assertion of Warner, the English cricketer, that once a Germnn eleven is seen in an international match nt Lord's "there will be .in end to the talk of war between the two nations," is nob justified by expel ience. That there is no more justification for this belief than the expectation that Olympic Games (such as those which hnve been fought out at Stockholm} will materially help forward the cause of peace. That Greece, where these games originated, and where they lasted many hundreds of years, always remained divided into a number of small States, between whom war raged more or less continuously. That the fact that Spartan athletes met Athenian athletes, Theban champions met Corinthian champions in the stadium does not seem to have lessened the hatred of tihe different divisions of the Hellenic race for one another.

That if ever any project promised to do away with war it was the inauguration of international exhibitions. That the holding of the first, in 1851, however, was almost immediately followed by the opening of an era of gory struggles and of bloated armaments which has not yet closed. That if the sword is to be finally beaten into the pruning-hook and the lion is to lie down with the lamb, we must look to some other means than world's sporting festivals or international exhibitions.

That the hope of universal peace rests with the workers of the world, in their recognition of the identity of interests of the toilers of all lands and their emancipation from the thraldom of capitalism.

Civilisation wastes its own resources and will d° so a! ? ' 011 § a 9 t' l6 present system lasts.—William Morris.