A VIOLENT SPEECH.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 79, 13 September 1912, Page 1

A VIOLENT SPEECH.

MR. SEMPLE ON THE DEFBNC-? ACT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) GREYMQUTH, Sept. 2.

Speaking at an anti-military meeting Mr. Semple, organiser of the New Zealand Federation of Labor, said that the forces were not required for tlie defence of this country, but the idea had come from the capitalists. The forces would be used in the case of industrial troubles, and they would be called upon to shoot their own fathers and brothers. Personally, he had a son who was just coming of age —i.e., liable to serve—and so far as he was concerned the defence authorities would have to walk over his own dead body before they would get the boy. In regard to the proposed military detention of boys who did not Tegister, he characterised this as worse than jail. It was a perfect hell. He did not think that they had anything to fear from Japan, where there were many Socialists. Some colonial politicians had gone Home and shaken hands with Japanese statesmen whose hands were dripping with the blood of Socialists executed in Japan.—"Otago Times."