The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1919 A LEAGUE OF BROTHERHOOD.

Taihape Daily Times, 21 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1919 A LEAGUE OF BROTHERHOOD.

(With wHicb is incorporated The faihape Port tad Waiejm.noo News).

The great historic conference of nations, sitting in Paris, has arrived at a perfectly unanimous agreement as to the basis of a constitution for international- government. bringing about a materialisation of Tennyson's dream of a "Federation of the World, a Parliament of Man." The federation of mankind will undoubtedly affect the social land industrial life of people over a large proportion of the face of the globe. -Nations belonging to the 'League will'not tolerate a differential status in any respect ;the corresponding classes in various countries will demand ..corresponding opportunities, and conditions. The federation of mail''..must eventuate in a widespread levelling up amongst the numerous classes and castes; the workers in one nation of the League will resent being treated and Jfor \their , labour differently to those in any other to their disadvantage. It is in this fact that we begin to realise that the establishment of a, '(parliament of man may revolutionise the old haphazard status of industrial systems. It needs no prophet to foretell that the time is drawing near when it will be impossible to import articles of various kinds cheaper from other countries than we can produce or manufacture them because labour employed therein receives less remuneration, for there is already a conference of 'labour discussing the world-situation of the workers under the new, dramatic developments as the result of war. In New Zealand there are m«n positively pestering the Industries Committee to have protective duties placed upon the class of goods they manufacture, 'and it seems very probable indeed that were any government insane enough to grant half the applications tendered, the cost' of living would not only create new crops of industrial strife, but would assuredly precipitate industrial revolution of a most violent and determined character. So anxious for higher profits, so constrained by greed and prompted by fear are they lest they miss something, that they have no time to meet and discuss, or even to realise, in fact, the new , basis of all industry that is visible on the industrial horizon. Instead of listening to Bolshevik propagandists who seem to have possession of their large ear, labour could be hugely more profitably employed in a rational political education of their class; for when the status of labour is a world subject instead of a mere com- J munity matter, their numbers will j be sufficient to control or influence j the parMameni cf parliaments in compelling a just and humane distribution of the world's riches. If the masses who suffer most by war determine that there shall not be war, then will the brotherhood of inan be established, and wholesale fratricide banished for ever. It is not made rationally understandable what advantage it is to the world to have many of its most valuable constituents exhausted and destroyed that

men of this ago may pile up riches which they can never legitimately use; is it not because that which was made in God's image is degraded and gold has been enthroned as god? That which has been snatched by toil of workers from the oarth to provide food and comforts for their families has been seized upon and locked, by the help of unjust laws, away from the very men that have produced it, and it has been used -to starve thorn into -a servile condition, often little better than slavery. Only by the insatiable avarice of human nature is the side by side of riches and famine understandable. Men, women iand children may starve while their

hands rest upon the rich man's store but if they take even that which would stem the passing away of their breath for ever, they become criminals, outcasts of society

< and liable to degradation in prison cells. What right has the unconscionable, unnatural voracity of the present age to be allowed to rob the unborn ntillions of the future unnecessarily, "wickedly indifferently," of what they have a right to share in. The catth is being depleted of its constituents which can never be replenished; man in Ma greed for riches and utter disregard for human life is using up the coal, iron, and other minerals of the earth to measurable depiction, that he may launch upon campaigns of killing of such magnitude that were it not for recent demonstration would fcSve remained unbelievable. The uprising of the masses in their determination to have a bigger share of the spoils of the earth has to some extent curbed the wasteful propensities, J »he rapacity, of coal and iron wreckers, but labour is allowing itself to be thrown off its true mision to mankind for a time by Bolsheviks, who know no law other than their own individual wills and it is thereby delaying the attainment of that equality of opportunity that the League of Nations offers for the establismcnt of a true brotherhood of man. The nations of the world are setting an example, and are demonstrating to the masses of the people, that pugnacity, anarchy, cultivation of. class hatred, after being tried in all their varying phases since the first word of history was written have proved utterly impotent in securing world-wide brotherly relation- j ship; ..that they have •culminated, even, in increasingly appalling na- , tional and international strife and human • butchery. Inhuman avarice has brought about its own suppression by the greatest of all wars and the institution of a world wide Federation of Peoples, with one Parliament and constitution for the government of mankind. Sooner or later every man and woman in the Federation will insist on franchise equality; in fact, that is a condition that cannot be delayed for long, for nothing but entire equality before and under the law will be tolerated in the very near future.- We read the horrifying proclamation by the Bolsheviks of Russia for the imbrutement of women, but is not the national disfranchisement, and forcible withholding of the franchise from women . akin to the brutal grossness of the ( Bolshevik cult ? The Supreme Architect, however regarded, has decreed that as man lives so shall women live, what is naturally essential for one is naturally essential for the other, nature made no arbitrary difference, but man in his inhuman lust for power, first cuts away the rights of women and then launches upon delimiting the rights and privileges of his fellow-men by whatever force nc can make available. The League of Nations has come into being for bringing about international equality and brotherhbod, and as a natural corollary that equality and brotherhood will percolate through all classes in all nations within, the Federation. There is no shadow of excuse for industrial strife in New Zealand, where every man and woman is enfranshised; workers have all the power to elect a Parliament and inaugurate conditions that are just to all in this age as well as in the ages to come. J