KEIR HARDIE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 209, 13 December 1910, Page 8

KEIR HARDIE.

To the Editor. Sir,—As a reader, of your paper I have admired many of your leading afticles for their literary value and fearless outspokenness upon a variety of subjects. Your issue of the 9th inst. furnishes us with an article against which I register my protest, as it constitutes a scurrilous and abusive attempt to misrepresent a democratic leader and his message. 1 have known him as the exact opposite of all that you say he is. It is the jingo Press that insists upon advertising hiin and succeeds in giving us a caricature. Reuter gave us half a text upon the Indian squabble and obscured the truth, which was afterwards revealed by Keir Hardie in the House of Commons. Those who know ihim best love him because he repudiates and scorns the self-advertis-ing methods and religiously devotes himself to the peopled cause with a selfabandonment that is so obviously rare. It was in the city of Bradford, in a dingy coffee-room, where Hardie outlined liis scheme for an independent political fighting force, which has grown to its present dimensions, now known as the "Labor Party.'' He was urged to take the leadership, which he begged to decline', but there was no man so eminently fitted to occupy that position from point of view of character, capacity and experience. His character to-day remains unsullied, but his capacity for work will be less to-day than it was then, because he ilias spent himself in laborious toil for the uplifting of the people against class interests and privilege, which has left him a physical wreck and without • reward. His life's experience is a vast monument of intense loyalty to the British toilers, 'whom he has always fearlessly represented and could never be bought or silenced. You charge him with being a peace-monger, and was not Jesus* Christ the same ? lam of the opinion that the war-monger is the deadliest enemy of tihe human race and a menace to' the highest interests of society as a whole. I would prefer an industrial strike being entered upon, with all the suffering that it would entail to the workers if it would stop a European struggle and end the murder of mankind. It would be the lesser evil in a great calamity. None of these things are necessary if we only acted as rational beings. We ought long ago to have .relegated war and in its turn industrial strike to the limbo which we have the duel and street fight. Such a man as Keir Hardie, who has piously devoted himself to a principle and loyally and unsparingly given himself to an unpopular cause (even should we differ from him politically), should command and deserve our respect; and we should refrain from the childish and pestiferous method of abusive mud-sling-ing.—l am, etc., MOSES AYRTON.

[The "scurrilous and abusive" article referred to gave our honest opinion of Keir Hardie, and our correspondent's calm, courteous and non-partisan letter in no way causes us to alter our opinions. Whatever Keir Hardie's ideal may be, his methods are dangerous and never pacific. He serves nobody in his repeated efforts to stir up class hatred. Class bitterness as a preventive of war is absurd. How an industrial strike, with its consequent starvation, could prevent international quarrels we are unable to see. We say nothing against Keir Hardie's character, merely believing that a man who uses a firebrand in the interests of peace has a distorted idea of his mission.—Ed.] t

BOROUGH AFFAIRS. To the Editor. Sir,—Can you inform me by whose authority a wooden building has been placed in the brick area ? I refer to premises in Brougham-street. This building, bit by bit from the back to the front, has been almost re-built and entirely in wood.—l am, etc., IXQUISITIVE.