QUITE ANOTHER MATTER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8350, 10 February 1913, Page 6

QUITE ANOTHER MATTER

Why all these excited demonstrations of displeasure by the squatters’ organ and the independent evening journal because the Federation of Labour and the United Labour party are making approaches to each other with a view to union and combined action in the face of a political danger common to each. Both these journals print cheap platitudes concerning the glorious principles of liberty and freedom. Where is either the liberty or the freedom if these two parties are not entitled to organise as they please, either as one united body or as independent fortes working together for one and the same end, without being compelled to run the' gauntlet of a persistent fusillade of abuse from interests that are notoriously not in sympathy with them or their aims? If these two Labour bodies were attempting to use militant methods to compel tho squatters’ organ and tho independent evening journal to join their forces, or if they were devising means of forcing the squatters and merchants and bank managers into their ranks, we could appreciate the abusive anger of the excited critics. But tho Federation of Labour and the United Labour party aro doing neither of these things. They simply desire to bo left alone to cultivate amiable and friendly relations with each other and work out a common destiny in sympathetic co-operation. Why should this peaceable design throw the two journals we have indicated into snob a state of dismayed consternation and_ abusive anger? Why. also, should their attention bo directed solely towards the Federation of Labour and the United Labour party? Why, for example, have they not given a turn to that circular from tho Employers’ Association urging “ professional men, merchants, sheepowners, farmers, property-owners, etc., etc.,” to i>oo] their dollars to pay organisera_ to organise a militant campaign against the Labour party and the Seven Devils of Socialism ? That, however, is a horse of quite another colour.