HOW I WOULD WIN THE WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 163, 7 April 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOW I WOULD WIN THE WAR.

AWAY WITH CLAPTRAP AND PONTICS, By C. B. STANTOX, M.P., in '"The Sunday Pictcna!

(>lr. Stanton is a Labour leader cf tin; C'romwcllian skimp. fearless in word and strong in action. He secured a -hing maji rity as a "Doublu Conscriptionist" in a former lair of theoretical Dacifcism.)

1 have been on the stricken field. I have been in the trenches. 1 have been under lire, I have seen ti c boys over there —the splendid boys who i.; j France and Flanders are defending i the .Motherland just as truly as \- they were fighting in the fields of Kent and Sussex. I have been anions the French lads teo, and I have been . able to form some estimate of the:r courage, their determination amour." ing almost to stoicism —the marvellous organisation of the armies of France. And now I am back in England, and I feel right down in my veins what a mighty and glorious struggle this is. i felt it before. I felt it when before the electors of Merthvr. I felt it when, for the first time, i j walked up the floor of the House of Commons- But I feel it to-day tenfold, and would give the best years of my life if I could make people here at home feel it as I do.

stream of f. esh troops should relieve their brothers in the trenches in France so that our power there should daily become more menacing, more hopeless to oppose on the pari of tho German hordes- 1 would accentuate the commercial and economic pressure on Prussia and her allies. If neutral countries did not like it. wc would politely note their object'ons and go on our own way. It is not the neutrals who will save us if we are mealy-mouthed about the war-policy of this country, MY MESSAGE TO GERMANY. aro we fighting for? For human liberty, for the rights of nationalities, fo<- the destruction for all time of the threat of German Militarism and .Tunkerdom and Hegemony; so, therefore, I wculd proclaim to the German people that v.e are ccming, not as conquerors, but as liberators, It is for this reason that

THE PEOPLE'S WAR. When, therefore, I am asked how I would win the war, I reply in the first place that 1 would embark on a mission, on an evangel to arouse the whole people. Britain to-day wants a Danton, a Gambetta, to call armies into being by the magic of the spoken word; and not only to call them into being, but to enthuse into the youngest recruit the sentiment of a quenchless patriotism. When I recall the days, which already seem distant, when we had to confute the miserable I.L.P. crowd in their contention that this i 3 a "capitalist war." I am amazed at the invincible ignorance of men who pretend to lead. A capitalist war. indeed! This is the people's war; This is the Empire's war—the more distant portons of the Empre have actually gven the Old Country a lead on this very matter. To win the war the whole of Brtan must fight, and T would have a short way wtli Conscentious Objectors.

the legions cf England and cf France and of Italy must go to Berlin —to bestcw on the German people rights and liberties which they have not been able to win for themselves. Their knowledge of this, their certa'nty of this, will not indeed prevent them from continuing to fight; will not prevent their masters trom forcing them to continue to fight, but it will spread a growing paralysis throughout the body, social and political, of Germany. I am a Socialist and a member of the old Red International. and the message I send to my former German Socialist comrades is not one to implant fear or desperation in their hearts, but courage and hope: To tho biM-ricJides, German Socialists, to tho Berlin barricades! Death to the Kaiser! Death to the Ho'icnzollerns! Death to tb": system which they incarnate! Death l\y the same road as the Stuarts and the Bourbons travelled!

OXE MIGHTY EFFORT. And the spring will come when peace shall reign over all the sodden fields where now there is nothing but the signs and the signals of war, and from this Calvary of humanity where the bodies of unknown heroes lie there shall grow up love and concord and prosperity. And flowers shall blossom upon the unnumbered graves of the heroes that have falleen. And liberty and law shall reign together. The men in khaki who are going to see this thing through are not only soldiers marching to victory, but builders of Empire—builders of United Hritain, the old Motherland and Canada, and Australia, and Africa, and India, and all the outlying posts of Empire united in bonds indissoluble. And the lacs in blue, the poilus ot France, are rebuilding and remaking the Republic—the Republic that has done so much for humanity and is predestined to do so much more. And n the East a mighty and growing legton —they too, are marching not only to victory, they are marching towards a Free Russia. They r,re marching towards an emancipated Poland. Through what a period are we living, my friends. What history is now in"the making? I would communicate these thoughts ancj these enthusiasms to all the slackers and the laggards; I would turn them from poltroons into men, I would destroy for all time the miserable game, of party politics. I would free Labour from the caucusmonger, the artful wirepuller, from all the claptrap and all the shibboleths and all the make-believes, I would make men realists; above all, I would make my countrymen see things clearly and see them whole; thus I _ would gather them together in one mighty irresistible effort, and thus I would win the war.

I am a democrat, a stickler for our constitutional rights, and while life is in ray body I will fight against domestic or foreign tyranny. But this war is a war which is waged in defence of our national independence against the greatest threat o_? Continental despotism that this countty has ever had to withstand in all its long history. Men who under such circumstances refuse, though able, to take their part in the defence of their country might be dealt with in two ways. "They might, I think, ba givsD, as I believe the Prime Minister has suggested, work that would not ent2il man-killing on their part, but which would expose their own worthless carcases enually with the boys who r.r? de'enuing the mothers and of England. Mine-sweeping, for instance, or picking up wounded under fire. Otherwise they nr'gh; by deported en masse, with the promise o' a drumhead courtmartini and a tiring party if they showed their dastard faces at any future time in the country cf their birth.

In order to win the war I wouiu pour armies into France, into the Balkans, into Mesopotamia. On the Tigris and the Euphrates I would threaten the Asiatic Empire of the Turks with half a million Britisli troops, and I would l'.nk up with the Russian armies in Persia and Asia Minor and engage every man that Turkey could put in the field. Between now and April I would send fresh armies into the Balkans so that when the snow is melted am ids' those rugged peaks Bulgaria should be threatened, Serbia and Montene gro rescued, and the eastern outpost? of Austria driven in. A constant