THE BOLSHEVIK

Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1918, Page 2

THE BOLSHEVIK

To the Edittir If a life of hard toil and self-1 denial fails to lift a man above an animal existence, rounded off by a pauper's grave then that man is under no obligations to society, nor has society any claim upon him.—Huxley. Sir, —The present world-wide -upheaval has proved one of two things: either man does not hold the exalted position in the order of creation,' that instinct and theology says he does; or society has been grossly mismanaged. If it is the former and man is merely an animal which has assumed the perpendicular, then the case, is hopeless, and the sooner he gets back to the hollow log or disappears altogether the better. If it is the latter, and constitutions and not man is at fault, then a world society reconstructed is „fuli of hopeful possibilities. The trouble is I that iqan pins his, faith to the -political machine, and. at the same time neglects the social and industrial section of his constitution. He gets dissatisfied with one political party and elects another, but overlooks the fact that a change of drivers won't convert a waggon into a motor car. The commercial state is an ideal state, provided that poles of extreme wealth and extreme poverty are absent. The State that insist upon living conditions being, the first charge upon an industry -at one end and exercises the right to take such portion of the National wealth as it thinks fit, to be used for betterment purposes at the other, is probably as near perfection as can hope for. Any Teforrn to be of a lasting benefit-to humanity must be."put upon a business basis, With legitimate commerce the workers JiaVe no quarrel, but with the greed that follows in the wake of commerce, and greed that makes the worker and two-thirds of the employers mere interest producing machines, to be cast aside when worn out or squeezed dry, is greed that distorts and perverts the most sacred of our institution. The Archbishop of Canterbury told the Germans the other day that righteousness must be vindicated, yet this same gentleman is the head of a church that invested a quarter of a million of its funds in Krupps. Witji examples like this, 1 multiplied the world over, is it any wonder that the Bolshevikism is gathering strength and momentumj or- that struggling parents who are rearing children with the knowledge /hat these same children might as time goes on be claimed as common fodder, are beginning to ask, -why? The history of deniocracies is that when the many headed start asking why they wind up by knowing why, or things happen. The civilisations of to-day are shooting the rapids of transition, 1 and it will take some . able and delicatje handling to avoid the rocks of disaster. To make a happy household clime For means and wife,; Is the true pathos , and sublime . Of human life. So sang Burtis, and until this simple claim is within the reach of man society will be living on a volcano. —I am, etc.,' FRANK BELL. Toko, December 8.