“THE LAND WE LIVE IN.”

Shannon News, 25 November 1921, Page 3

“THE LAND WE LIVE IN.”

A QUESTION OF LOYALTY. WORKERS IGNORE THE KING. i The Taranaki Workers’ Council held their annual smoke concert on Saturday night in the Workers’ Social Hall, and the event was made the occasion of a welcome to the delegates who are at present attending the Dominion Conference of the vVatersiders’ Federation, which is sitting at New Plymouth. In consequence, however, of the customary loyal toast of “The King” being ignored'for that of “The Land We Live In,” the Herald reporter declined to fake account of the proceedings, and left the meeting. Mr G. Scott, president of the Workers’ Council, occupied the chair, and in the course of his opening remarks welcomed the visiting Relegates, and said there were no more militant bodies in New Zealand than the Watersiders’ Federation and the Miners’ Union. He was pleased to be associated with such a militant body as lhe watersiders had been in the past—(applause)—and he hoped that when their conference was finished they would be able more militantly to safeguard what they had won. After a hearty round of applause bad been given as a welcome to the visitors, the chairman then proceeded to propose the first toast of the evening, "The Land .We Live In.” Mr Scott said he had moved the same toast at a similar function a short time ago, and lie could conceive of no more appropriate expression id loyalty than that of devotion to the country we live in. He said a lot of “froth” had been “blown off” about loyalty and constitutionalism, but it reminded him of drinking a glass of beer—when the froth was blown off it was the underneath that counted. Mr Scott said he had consulted an encyclopaedia in regard to (lie meaning of constitutionalism, and found that it had said that the “welfare of the people was the supreme law,” and he thought that, welfare would be best attained by loyalty to one’s country, and by trying to lift up the people to that standard spoken of by Robert Burns when he referred to the . time when “man to man shall brothers be.”. The toast was then drunk—it must be said—in a not very enthusiastic manner, and Ihe Herald reporter left the hall.—New Plymouth Herald.