LABOUR AND COMMUNISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22986, 15 September 1936, Page 12

LABOUR AND COMMUNISM

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Reading your leader on this subject brought to mind a matter that has been exercising my mind for some days. Recently a Communist advocate, speaking on behalf of this line of thought, advocated and supported militarism. The same evening I was invited to attend a meeting of the “No More War Movement.” I was astonished to see the same advocate, together with a number of his offsiders, supporting, both by vote and verbally, a resolution condemning war and militarism in any form. This is, to my mind, on all fours with the Russian representative going to the League of Nations with a proposal immediately to scrap all military equipment, knowing full well that that was quite impossible as an immediate objective. He, however, was able, with this manoeuvre, to place it on record that Russia was the leader in pacifism. I will be told that this is quite consistent, that the Communist hopes, when the armies are in the field, to infect them with Soviet ideas and so cause confusion. Well, I would say let the people understand , clearly that the Communists have no hope of bringing people to their way of thinking in a quiet, sober way, but only when passions are aroused and in a state of confusion. The world has never been the better for confusion; indeed, the product of confusion is dictatorship, and is altogether inconsistent with world and social progress—l am, etc.. Observer.