The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1917 THE PACIFICISTS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 284, 15 June 1917, Page 2

The Times. PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1917 THE PACIFICISTS.

"We nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."

The news that the notorious Ramsay Macdonald and his companion Jowett are Deing held up in their peace at any price mission by the Seaman's and Fireman's Union will cause an almost universal glow of satisfaction, even if it isembarassing to the Government, which has evidently promised the Russian Provisional Government that the views of the '' stop the war " party should be presented to them We are not as a rule advocates of threats to strike as a means of enforcing either principles or expedients, but we cannot help feeling that if the threatened strike should come from the enforcement by the Government of the release of these men who are virtually prisoners of the Union the National Cabinet itself will have very short shrift thereafter. For years men of the kidney of Mac Donald and Snowden have been working to destroy England and her Empire by preventing the nation arming itself against the evident perils that beset it. If they had any sense of decency the events of the past three years would make them bury themselves in solitude and pray that they and their acts and words might be forgotten forever. But now they are working for a patched-up peace that would practically leave their friends the Huns conquerors, and ready to attack civilization again as soon as they had recovered their wind. Not content with having been the potential murderers of hundreds of thousands of their fellowcountrymen in this generation they are content to take upon themselves a greater holocaust of blood-guiltiness in the generation to come.

We owe much to our naval heroes, but our debt to the heroes of the mercantile marine is little, if at all, inferior. Their feats of courage and self-devotion if less showy have been 110 less real. Their dangers, at all events since the first of February last, have certainly been 110 less than those the men 011 the war-ships have had to face. The trial to their nerves has been probably greater as must always be the case when receiving punishment one cannot adequately return as against the exhilarating excitements of a ding-dong fight.

The simplest-minded, bravest and sincerest class of our people, the sea-faring men, have, we believe, with the fine psychological insight that accompanies honest directness of character, taken the proper course. The politicians were willing to use the scum of our population to con vince Russia that we are a strictly democratic people. But the sailors know that the encour-

ageinent to our enemies Iroiu a mission ot that character would greatlv outweigh any goods that they could <lo by a visit to our anarchistic disorganised Eastern AHv, and so they have ae f ed, as ever, to the honour of the Empire. Not even our politicians can damn and ruin us while we have half n-million of such men alloal