The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1918. MOULDING THE FUTURE.

Taihape Daily Times, 26 August 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1918. MOULDING THE FUTURE.

(With which is Incorporated The fftihape Post and Walnmtlao News).

With, preseat day social, political and industrial progress new conditions have arisen, and menaces to the common weal have grown up with which past eras have had no knowledge, and the question has been forced upon the people of this country as well as the peoples of other countries, as to whether those repressive means taken have been such as are calculated to restore and maintain the security of common citizenship. The murcier and brigandage of the German war party is a sore on civilisation that is localised; its root is not of the cancerous nature that is incurable, so long as sufficiently drastic treatment is maintained till every vestige and symptom of the disease has disappeared. There is, however, a cancerous growth on present day civilisation for which no antidote, has yet been found, or it found it has not been applied; we refer to that which is represented by Bolshevism in Russia, and which is known as the LW.W. in all parts of the British Empire. This cult is not confined to Britain and Russia, for it has its parallel in France, Germany, and, in fact, right throughout both hemispheres, extending to Japan and other eastern nations. All that it was possible to learn before the war, and in the earlier stages of the war, as to its creed may be summe'd up in the one word, destruction. Later in the war there were not wanting most definite and convincing evidences that its mission is to ruthlessly destroy everything in the nature of obstacles in its wajf, from human life downward. To where this way leads, or what is the ultimate sought, ,is indeed very obscure, but there are two countries that throw ample,light, on the way for the people of the world to see with no dimness of vision that the LW.W. represents a world-wide system of robbery, burnings and murder. In Russia the disciples of Bolshevism have left no doubt about the interminable wallowing in human blood with nothing else but robbery and the destruction of all systems of civil, sane government at every stage of it. There does not appear to be any condition to be reached in which anything of a constructive character has any part. It may be said that it is all very well to talk about what is rampant in Russia; that has nothing to do with what is possible in any part of the British Empire; but people who shelter themselves behind such lack of perception and knowledge are almost as great a da'nger as are the very members of the I.W.W. themselves. These outlaws arc just as ready when the opportune moment arrives to attack our system of Government, as their confreres are to attack government in other countries. Although in New Zealand lawlessness has been suppressed, there is ample evidence that the I.W.W. ferment is doing its deadly work amongst our people. In Australia the destructive cult has used anticonscription as a means of placing upon the escutcheon of the Commonwealth a blot that will evoke feelings of shame in future generations. The Government was assailed and its stability was endangered, in fact, that danger is not yet entirely averted. F’epple have short memories, but the people of Australia and New Zealand will not yet have forgotten the I.W.W. robberies, burnings and murders in Australia that led up to the prosecution and punishment of some of the chlpr'ik This did not stay the hand of the destryers; they levelled at the Government a charge of having "framed up” evidence and of having suborned witnesses by paying them huge sums out of the public treasury. This charge was narrowed down to one instance in which the paid false witness had left the country, and. we

have nc more damning evidence against our party government system than the fact that the cancer germ of modern civilisation was able to so contaminate a party as .to - bring about disruption in the legislature of the country. The Government was chargei with corruption and dishonesty, and so persistent was the charge pressed in Parliament that a Royal Commission had to be set up to enquire Into it. The witness, a man named Scully, was brought back from America, and the I.W.W. Commission is now taking his and other evidence. Scully has declared before the Commission that he had no arrangement with the Crown, and that he had no knowledge of rigged-up evidence. Of course, the whole of the charges against the Government will be proved false, and they are only referred to here so that it may be realised that the I.W.W. menace is ever present, and so that point may be given to the question: What is going to be done to secure more complete immunity from it in the troublous times coming, when many of the old social, industrial and political excrescences will be discarded, and the systems themselves may possibly find a way to the melting pot? While employers are hoodwinked injto following a party of greed into the lists of declared war and dishonest attitude against employees assuming an autocratic despotism worthy of a Kaiser, and while labour is being cajoled by I.W.W, elements, and forced by the overbearing behaviour of capitalistic greed, into picking up the glove so persistently thrown down, are the masses of the people of all ranks and the Government going to remain inactive; going to allow matters to drift until an incipient stage of civil war is reached? Will the people and Government of this country act with similar pusilanimity or diffidence in this I.W.W. menace, as the British people and Government did in connection with the German war menace? If Bolshevism is not accepted as an indication of what may eventuate here we cannot disregard what the I.W.W. has done, and is doing in Australia, and we are of opinion • that Government money could be much less profitably spent, than in printing and broadcasting throughout New Zealand a history of the burnings and murders of the Australian. .Bolsheviks, epitomised from the leading Australian news, papers. Our greatest danger is ignorance; to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Let the masses of the people know the characteristics of the 1.W.W., so that they may readily detect it and thereby be enabled to close the doors of their deliberation chambers against it. The peace of mind of every intelligent thbughtful person is disturbed about after war political, social and industrial conditions. Government might not only publish a brief, convincing history of the I.W.W. in Australia, and distribute it free, but encouragement might be given and subject matter furnished to existing associations, or to associations to be established for the purpose of discussing, and of educating the people respecting the perilous breakers ahead and how the Ship !of State may avoid them. We all see the i “Sword of Damocles” over our heads, are we to sit down and wait for;its fall, as the British people and Government waited for the bloody scourge from which the Empire is still bleeding?