The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. MONDAY, JULY 26, 1920. IMPRESSIONS FROM PARLIAMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3536, 26 July 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

MONDAY, JULY 26, 1920. IMPRESSIONS FROM PARLIAMENT.

With which is incorporated "The Taihape Post and Waimarino News.”

As the debate in Parliament on the Address-in-Reply proceeds the one most notable feature is the superior oratorical powers' of the Labour members, and were it not for frequent lapses into what most loyal citiflens can only regard as perfidy amounting to a semblance of treachery their forcefully delivered criticism would he something for any opponent to fear. As it is these modern disciples of Demosthenes, if not of Democritus, are calculated to exercise considerable influence on the minds of a very large circle of the working classes.- Their political creed seems to be covered by the one word “destruction.” The speeches, so far, from those Labour members who have spoken, understandably convey the process of carrying out that destruction they advocate. They state in plain language that if they ever get on the Treasury Benches their first act will he to destroy the usages of the House; they will reform in as many minutes what has taken centuries to build up. They will wipe out present methods of effecting legislation, of conducting administrative departments; they will smash down what they term impositions'and shams, heedless of their .sacredness to many people whose wishes are entitled to as much respect' as their own. When they have exhausted their iconoclastic propensities by wrecking all that offends their vitiated temperaments in New Zealand they openly propose turning their attention to smashing up the Empire. In fact, they are in a remarkable, hurry to get to work on the Empire, as indicated in their challenging of the Speaker’s ruling against an effort to get a disloyal proposal on. the parliamentary order paper. As these social and political wreckers succeed against ,the Empire their attention is to be turned to breaking down all other governing systems that j there be nothing to prevent theirs being installed and them- j selves made dictators. Their [ admiration for Lenin and Trot-

sky is illimitable and supreme, as made evident by frantic efforts to have Soviet and other "red” literature admitted freely into this country to help forward the propaganda of their creed, ..or cult of destruction. When their iconoclastic appetites have been satisfied of what nature will be the debris? They do not essay to clearly define what the world would then be like, but, of course, it is known beyond any chicanery and cunning precept just what Russia is like to-day, and it can only be assumed that like ,will produce like. Surely, those exceedingly clever Labour orators do not expect the workers of this Dominion to believe that the cult which has transformed Russia into a j 1 veritable hell will change any other country into a veritable heaven. They insult intelligence by scoffing at the feelings and opinions which hundreds of thousands of the people, of this country hold sacred; they would wipe out that great moral structure upon which the civilisation ig based that evolved them; they are out to reform everybody and everything. They glory i n being called extremists and in their abyssmal seif-conceit and self-exaltation they liken themselves to the of Christianity. They | claim that all'reformers were extremists, but, let it be added, all ref mm- I erg and all extremists were not 1 traitors. It cannot be denied that there ig very much that is praiseworthy in the speeches of these extremists, and if the good in Labour extremists in Parliament could be di- 1 vorced from that which is positively a j danger to the BritisTi Empire and to British homes no party in the House would com'inand a bigger and mure determined party in the country. They have admirably stated and dissected many golden maxims, they would expunge all vestige of privilege accorded to might, and they would establish a regime of right, a status of political, social and industrial equal’ty before and under the law by which only can a

reign of permanent peace am contentment be established. In thbi they advance seme tangible claim to be classed in that category of extremists in which they included the Founder of Christianity. But in what category shall their applauding; their extolraent and advocacy of that form of government by which the unfortunate Russian people are now enslaved be placed? It cannot be claimed that in that they disclose the faintest relationship with the extremism of the Founder of Christianity, In wha. category shall that motion in Parlia-

merit be placed which members by a vote of forty-one to lour threw out, without discussion even? The Speaker ruled that it was a disloyal motion, and the House upheld the ruling by an almost unanimous vote. Extremists 5 n Parliament are, as we have said, out to reform the world; they have not made much headway in New Zealand yet, still they would have Parliament to dictate to Britain the home and foreign policy that should be followed, a policy that was evolved designedly for rapidly bringing about disaster to the British Empire and to British homes. They won' intensify a million times Hie viciousness of that commercialism and materialism which are the parents of that disloyal Sovietism of which people of the British Empire have cognisance of. In their desperation, perhaps, they would destroy an unprecedented curse upon the world with an overwhelmingly greater curse. There are two distinct sides ito the politics of extreme Labour, both made undeniably plain in extremist speeches on the Address-in-Reply; It is an incompatible mixture, for one must so disastrously react upon Hie other as to produce a new political compound in comparison with which the most deadly and comprehensive inventions for social decadency and death, are mere toys. It is bewildering to endeavour to understand why these extremists in Parliament will so tenaciously persist in allying, in linking together a benign and humane advocacy of labour’s interests, with a disloyal unpatriotic effort to destroy the British Empire, and all other empires, unless it is to gratify a dangerously abnormal egotism and pride. It is difficult to believe that men in British parliaments are so consumed with a spirit of abandon and confiscation, involving murder and starvation of millions, that they may revel in the chaos they seek to bring about, but there is in the one policy of these extremists that which is superlatively admirable, and that which is superlatively accursed. They stand for- gloriously benignant peace ,plenty and contentment one minute, disloyalty and that compeer of Dante’s Inferno obtaining in Russia the next. Why they will persist in ' associating such incompatible elements beggars all logical comprehension. Those representatives of extremism are clever men, of very much more than average intelligence; they need no telling that disloyalty and I Sovietism are delaying that justice ,which is the popular right, and one is thereby forced to the conclusion that it is the destruction of Empire and the establishment of Russian Sovietism they are primarily concerned with and that they are using labour as a mere stepping stone thereto. The trashy literature they desire to broad- j cast throughout this country is not ! going to sap British loyalty. British love of home and country; British sentiment is much too deep-seated in the British character for that. That literature is mere camouflage, intended to confuse the mind and judgment, blind people to the hell that is behind it all. At no time in British history was there more urgent need to exercise care in accepting tiny docBritish people know the devil they are afflicted with, and they know how to exercise it. but they have no experience of that angel of death by assassination, massacre and starvation that has spread its Soviet (80lwings over all Russia. This is indeed a time for caution; everything the overwhelming majority of Britishers hold most dear and sacred is in jeopardy.