The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1921. THE COUNCIL OF ACTION.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3557, 20 August 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1921. THE COUNCIL OF ACTION.

With which is incorporated "The Taihape Post and Waimarino News,"

L,aW court proceedings and annual meetings of this country's manufacturing, trading and finance companies seem to indicate that modern society is in an increasingly regressive* state; that its operations and its very life and existence is largely based, and dependent upon lying and cheating. So bold and shameless are the vultures whose acts tarnish the good name of the whole that the State has found it necessary to enact laws for repressive purposes. Profiteering committees have been established in most large trading centres to keep trader s honest and to prevent poor people from having „their scant earnings unjustly filched from them. These Profiteering Committees have been engaged with remarkable constancy, and they have sent many profiteering culprits to various stipendiary magistrates to answer for their contemptible misdemeanours. Hundreds of 6thers, not so deeply dyed in the sm of greed have yet transgressed the bounds of common • honesty and have been ordered to refund the amounts they were guilty of overcharging. What society really has to determine is what relationship these comparatively minor offences have to the alarming spread of disloyalty that undeniably obtains, even throughout the British Empire, under the mos* beneficent democratic- government that the peoples of the world have yet evolved. They no doubt are the pin-pricks which tend to render the acts iof trusts and combines, who have stolen the power enabling them to decide nations shall not be depopulated By starvation, insufferable, no* longer tolerable. It has' been noticed by economists, and their observations have been recorded. They state that, as commercialism and materialism each provided the natural conditions best suited for the other to thrive in, the -time would be brought rapidly nearer when each would have to prey upon the other in the struggle for supremacy, and even for sheer existence. The period of thriving partnership has, economists state, now ended, and materialism has developed new, characteristics that are fraught with a danger to its erstwhile friend, causing unprecedented alarm. Trading trusts, shipping combines and financial corpora- ' lions have seized the reins by which governments are led and directed, but their ne»w l enemy is riot to be outdone altogether in the governing business. On the continents of Europe and Asia the new materialism, called Bolshevism, has gained the upper hand over large areas of territory, while in the British Empire it has already, instituted its Councils of [Action. Of course, it is .beyond ques- , jtion that trading trusts and financial) corporations could end all social un- j rest and class bitterness jn the Briti- | ish Empire almost as by a waving of the magicianfs wand, even if they | failed in such far gone drift as obtains in Russia; but, the postulate that greed has no conscience is so well established that greed will risk and lose all in a, trial of strength rather than save something in co-operating with government to usher in that peace that is essential to a maintenance of present civilisation. Governments are perplexed and dismayed with the unnatural obstinacy of profiteering vultures, and with the depredations of the meaner trading microbes to which profiteering committees are entirely devoting their particular- attention. They see retri- i bwtive Bolshevism looming up, black- > ening the social horizon, and they hear the voice of the newly etsablished opponent of constitutional government giving orders and issuing mandates which the populace, as a means of self-protection from unnatural enemies, will obey. The Council of ( Action declares that,, it will only operate within certain limits to-day, but to-morrow those limits will be brushed away; one success will beget another until no choice is left but that

"J between capitulation and civil war. Grim, bitter, demoniacal war overshadows the visage of the forces of greed and also that of the forces loyal to the Council of Action, and this Dominion is drifting heedlessly to a state of internicine bitterness and war. Employers have been importuned to meet with the men in ranks from which % lhey themselves only recently sprang, but they win have no part in trying to keep out the New Zealand Council o,f Action; the New Zealand Council of Action is, however, as sure to arise as that a British Council of Action has arisen, if it is not already a fait accompli. The possibility of coercion no longer obtains; Council of Actionists are a can only be approached in one of two ways, either on an equality in conference, or by force of arms ; no virtue is. left' in laws constitutionally enacted, "for the great British government, unquestionably the most just government on earth, is challenged and defied. The bluffing stage, otherwise the diplomatic precedent to rupture is now being passed through, in what surroundings will commercialism and Bolshevism emerge? Trading profiteers have hypnotised governments into the . impression that .this terrible derangement of social conditions is impossible of cure; that •there is no specific; that the disease must run its course whatever the final result produced upon civilisation. The severity of wounds sustained by i the populace at the hands of greed is Resulting in. a marshalling iof the white corpuscles of the masses in readiness ; for war against profiteering and oppressive poison, and a visualisation of that force is the newly arisen Councils >of Action., The mad (orgy proceeding is baffling the world's highest intelligences, not because social degeneracy cannot be retrieved, but because the guilty degenerates w;ll not permit it being retrieved. Rapid change for the better would follow determined action to limit the aggressiveness of jshippisg rings, land trusts and financial corporations a& America limited : the operations of the great meat trusts in the United States, There lis no indication, however, in aggresjsive quarters that any specific for isocial derangement is desired.