AWAKE!

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 233, 8 December 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

AWAKE!

some war FRrrrs. In the last thirty years beiore tfii nar Germany s agricultural workers increased l.y very nearly 2,000,000 whilo ours decreed by a quarter of a mi!"on Germany increased her textile workers by 200,000; ours increased £ 0n1y55,000. She increased hormet-il ,„,kers-iron steel and engineerin--by more than 1,.500,000 against our increase of :700,000. She Tncreased her miners by 1.000,000 against our 00,0^ of' industry!" PrafllCa "- V ™? Germany increased her production . t 'ron, tor instance, from 3,000,000 torn a year to very nearly 20,000,000, whiJa wo increased ours only from 8,000 00() tons a year to 9,000,000 tons. «S tails? r £ *?■;

In only fifteen years Germany, mamIJ bj virtue of her subsidised and beun- ££?♦ f m - p, " g PP 1 in «-eased her L ,1 ° f , ™ ?Jl d steel Products from [ess than 1,000,000 tons a year to mom than 6,000,000 ton,, we iKJKX toils 3 '- 500 ' 000 t«ns to 5,000,000

f,il;+; P °j <>,ir « u P e "or shipping faoiJit.es a .nd our of Vast nonunions and Dependencies, the Ger mans heat us in iron, steel, and engineering exports. By almost every te«-. that could I> 3 applied, the German, were lx>atmg. or had already beat>n

And it ,* worth while remarking th.it, much of Germany s progress was made at our expense and was due to follv We not only gave the Germans, as we gave other nations, a free marke* f<>ondnary trading, but we allowed them to cut into and undermine our industries by subsidised dumping— the worst form of cemmercial " blacklegging" tin world has ever seen. We filled our shops with German "black-leg" goods while our own willing workers, lac-kins employment, emigrated or starved We put German bounty-fed steel rails in our streets .while our own unemployed steel workers hungered . Not satisfied with placing our industries at th* mercy of the German syndicates wv exposed our Imperial status to German designs.

MENACED AT ALL POINTS. We cut down our naval expenditure the smallest in the world relatively to our commerce and Impeial rcsponsibilities-and thus encouraged the Germans to try to overtake us in sea-power. In at least one year. 1908, we only launched 49,000 tons of !!-Tv^" htmg shi P s afiW'nst Germany'8/,000 tons. To a Little Army w> were prqiared to add a Little Navy in spite of Germany's huge prepantions, both military and naval. Stepped in sport, intoxicated m*l -frivolity, blinded with luxuries—mostly the fruits of the labours of former generations—and immersed in g;ng party polities manufactured by a horde of place-hunting lawyers "w« were allowing ourselves to be beaten", blaek.egged and blood-sucked by the Huns. Ihe Germans could come to no other conclusion than tliat we were ■» nation of fools. They were justified in judging us, a democratic people oy the po lWians we elected to govern us While the Germans filched our trade and roblxyl our workers, bhuklecrged our manufacturers and tried to monopolise our supplies of materials, ou - gllb-tongued lawyer-politicians discus<ed things that did not matter. ThGovernment appointed multitudes or bureaucrats to inspect and regulate us from cradle to grave, but made not The slightest effort to protect our trades and industries against the most inndioiis forms of German competition. Our manufacturers were too stupid to organise to meet the highly cooperative trading methods of" the Huns. Our workmen ] o so 100.000,000 sepnrato working days in ten years, while the Germans were picking ffw p. urns of the worlds' business. W lthin another ten years our position would have been almost hopeless. Now. just in the nick of time, we have Ixvn brought back to something like our real senses -though there is .still some doubt about our politicians. The old British spirit has not been dead, it appears, but only sleeping, or drugged. Our young men have rallied to the oid flag splendidly, in spite of the muddles of the politicians. Although we appeared long ago to have censed to be a military race, although ivs had Httlo practical experience of war, although we were not really seriously threatened with invasion and had been taught to rely upon our Navy, although this was practically a Continental war in which we could hardly exp<>ct our working classes o feel a vital stake, although our Government of lawyers offered no more than o'dinary peace-time soldiers' pay while awarding extraordinary wages to miners and others, and although the War Office was utterly unprepared to deal with ret suiting on a large scale and did much to discourage it. our young men offered themselves by the million. And they came forward in the largest numbers when reports from the front wore the blackest. Magnificent is the only word that fits the spectacle. In spite of all the class legislation oi i.-c-cnt yea>s, all the Socialist and Syndicalist agitators, and all the falso doctrines of the politicians, we have shown ;• marvellous national unity and a wonderful fighting sp'rit when put to the : upreine test of a gigantic war conducted with all the niechnnie.il and scientific, devilry that a natio'i of fiends i.-nu'd de.is-e.

A SEW I! HIT A I.V We ltn-c only to continue this newfound unity ait-.-r the w.ir in order to so'-Hiv tli' l firont prize of tit" war—t new Rntam . Wo are {joing 10 work as n n-it-ion for tl:o common t;ood as >ve are HjxTit-'n <r as a nation. We are froin;* to j>"oto t and our industries an I >!iow t!;e world tint we <*nn work ii\'d r.rrd:: r -p and trade as wel! ns we r n lii'jit. E. T. fIOOD.