The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18 1918. THE DANGER OF EXTREMES.

Taihape Daily Times, 18 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18 1918. THE DANGER OF EXTREMES.

(With which is Incorporated The T aihape Pontpnd Vralmarino News).

_______ Information coming to hand in connection with the wars 'aftermath does not deal with acts of war, or inform us that thousands of men have been annihilated in battle, that thousands of prisoners have been captured and some miles of country have been captured, and that numerous guns and incalculable war paraphernalia arc taken, the sensation is of another but no less distressing character. It seems that the victors arc so busy reorganising their money-getting machinery, and making out their claims for indemnities that their eyes find little opportunity to observe the danger to civilisation that is looming up on all sides and in all quarters. The butchery of war is over, but murder is becoming fashionable. The reign of terror is so 'acute in Petrograd that the Dutch Minister in that unhappy city declares to his Government that Bolshevism is the end of civilisation. Translated into practice, he says, its principles are high wages for no work, taking property of others without punishment, and no taxation; Petrograd is utterly exhausted, the corruption and tyranny is undreamablc, the future is hopeless, and if left to herself Russia will be utterly ruined- A correspondent in Berlin, the other day, marvelled at the extreme thinness of the veil between civilisation and barbarism, and it is little short of an axion that genius is ever on the verge of insanity. Governments and peoples, if they notice them at all, arc prone to view such conditions and phenomena as something that merely is, and they blindly set about killing and punishing the killers and robbers. To search for the source, the cause of the malady and destroying that upon which its roots feed does not appear to have any part in their methods, or even to have atitrtactftd .their ' attention-;. Bolshevism is rampant in Russia; it is very seriously threatening Germany and Austro-Hungary; it is spreading in Scandinavia; it has issued a proclamation in the United States cancelling all debts, repealing all laws, and directing immediate dissolution of all military and naval organisations; it has commenced its sabotage in Australia, its burnings and murderings, and it is fast gaining ground in what truly should be God's Own Country. Bolshevism is the effect of a cause; in Russia it is the first wave of redaction (to centuries of slavery of the masses. The fact that the chains binding down the people in slavery to autocracy were cut by German military corruption does not disturb the fact, the reaction would have come sooner or later. In the first mad ebulliency of freedom the erstwhile slaves go to the opposite extreme practiced by their enslavers; they want, it is said, high wages for no work. The lords of autocracy have whipped and robbed them for centuries, and now they think it their right to take whatever they please from their long time despoilcrs; they were made to work for the upkeep of autocracy, and with their newfound freedom they want to cast all responsibilty off their shoulders for paying taxation. By sane processes of mitigation :and amelioration there should be found a halfway condition between mutual peace and mutual destructiveness in New Zealand as well as in all other countries of the world. Capitalism and the lust for power necessary to maintaining the pcrmancy of government by capitalism is so unrelenting, so all-confident in its powers, so blind to the storm it is arousing around it. that it spurns the warnings of revolutionary undcr-cur-rents. In this country there is no political and social situation between the two extremse of the National Government with its appalling mass of indirect taxation, support of profiteering and land aggregation, and

the Bolshevism .that only preaches revolution, and so long as this condition is maintained there need be no misgivings about which way the masses are overwhelmingly drifting to seek relief. A reaction has set in against long oppression; against wages miserably out of proportion to profits earned; against those conditions which iLloyd George says has caused the much vaunted good government of the British Empire to bow its head with shame in the company with 'Russia 1 , Turkey and Germany; Turkey openly massacres its victims, Britain puts her sons and daughters to a slow death by starvation and privajtion thte 'its law-making class may become vulgarly and filthily rich, and when defenders of the Empire are urgently needed to save the shameless class from loss and slavery they are bankrupt of manhood. We have remarked that there is no haven of safety for the masses otf (this country, the National Government is anathema, throughout this war it has entirely forfeited the confidence of the masses: purveyors of every commodity necessary to life, except labour, have been allowed to increase prices to anything they pleased. Government, in Parliament, ministerially and through the Board of Trade and Efficiency Board have advanced a most pitiful defence. By their words and acts they have allowed the profit fiend to have full sway during four years of war, pretending and urging that it was impossible to make prices reasonable by legislation because there were no unreasonably high prices. Now the war is over they have discovered the profit fiend and ho is to be suppressed; in the dying hours of the session, last week, the Government belatedly discovered that the profit fiend had been running riot amongst the people for four years, and they urgently amended the "War Legislation Bill," providing for a penalty on summary conviction for profiteering of two hundred pounds on individuals and one thousand pounds on companies. It is safe to venture the statement that there is not a sane man in New Zealand that was not fully aware of the insincerity of The Government about the cost of living, and its crut-l disregard of the rights of both citizens and soldiers. The position undoubtedly is that the country neither wants the National Government methods and policy or Bolshevism, but they do urgently want something in between that will administer the affairs of the nation with justice. If it is to be a fight in New Zealand between these two extremes it is easy to predict that Bolshevism will win. This country is in direst need of a saviour who will make out a scheme that should be acceptable-to all from its innate justice. In leaving people to decide bet wren the two present issues lies the very gravest danger this country lias yet been -threatened with. Oppression has sunk too deeply into the hearts of the people to be rubbed off with the glamours of "Peace Declaration" or the cunningly devised promises of their oppressors.