The government and the most conservative newspapers are campaigning against striking coalminers and other workers guilty of ‘disloyalty.’ The Poverty Bay Herald, for example, uses common phrases when it editorialises about the question today. ‘Looking back over the last few months there has been scarcely a week in which some new dislocation of industry has not occurred — watersiders, jockeys, firemen, sugar workers, tramwaymen, and colliers have all shared in the general provocation of disturbance.’ The disputes are being stirred up by extremists. ‘The extremists would divide the community into two classes: Labor and Capital; but where can they draw the line? There are thousands of people with small businesses who cannot be put into the capitalist class, and who are most severely hit on every occasion by the strike promoters. There are thousands of clerical workers who are equally suffering from the constant dislocation of industry.’ The nation as a whole sees ‘a conspiracy insidiously at work to promote trouble — forces of revolution and anarchy which if the extremists had their way, would land New Zealand in just such disastrous trouble as has occurred in Russia or Italy.’
​
Poverty Bay Herald, 30 September 1920

The Hawkes Bay Tribune, a conservative newspaper backing the Reform Party, editorialises today about what it says were the causes and consquences of the South African War at the end of the 19th century. ‘We were all, and still should be, just as proud of the men who came so promptly forward then as we were, and still are, of those who volunteered and were drawn for service in the Empire’s cause in the Great War.’ The South African War ‘vitally affected the prestige and the destiny of the British race.’ The British Empire, by attacking the republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State, was able to keep Germany out of southern Africa and led to the creation of the Union of South Africa. ‘It is quite impossible to estimate the present-day value to the Empire,’ and to New Zealand ‘as an integral part of the Empire,’ of the work of the young men from New Zealand who volunteered to join the British invasion army. The First World War ‘would have been one very appreciably more difficult to win’ without ‘a South African Union loyal to the British Crown.’ The editorial praises the ‘beneficence’ of the British Empire and says nothing about the racial hierarchy in South Africa.
​
Hawkes Bay Tribune, 30 September

Maoriland Worker, the only weekly Labour Party newspaper, says in its editorial today that people have been hearing ‘quite a lot’ lately about ‘National Defence.’ Discussion has been led by the National Defence League and by newspapers supporting the Liberal Party and Reform Party. ‘We have been presented with imaginary invasions of barbarous hordes stalking through the land, pillaging, devastating and destroying all the desirable things we socially enjoy today. ... Have the people of this little country forgotten all the nice terms that were so glibly uttered during the last six years about the “Sword drawn for peace,” “Conflict of cultures,” and the rest of the cheap phrases that only served to sustain the hopes of the people during a period of war? ... The unsuspecting workers have blindly followed the carefully-prepared plans of the diplomat and militarist, only to find that each time they have been betrayed and fooled into bleeding and dying ... ’
​
Maoriland Worker, 29 September 1920

Truth says today that the First World War was not, as Allied leaders claimed, a war ‘in defence of small nations.’ Nor was it a war ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ Nor was it a trade war or a war for territory, ‘although, of course, considerations of trade and territory entered into the motives of the belligerents, and have since entered largely into the crushing terms of peace imposed on the vanquished nations.’ The war was essentially a ‘balance of power’ war of a very traditional sort, says Truth; it was a war in which one group of states banded together to stop another group of states becoming too strong. Almost all historians one hundred years later will agree with this analysis. Truth goes on to argue that the next big war will be fought for the same reasons.
​
New Zealand Truth, 25 September

A big gathering of Catholics has just met in Greymouth to protest against a new Marriage Law Amendment Bill. Other meetings have been held elsewhere in the country. The marriage reform bill is seen by the church everywhere in the country as an attack on its religious and other cultural rights. New Zealand Catholics and Protestants have been at bitter odds since many of them quarrelled about authority and imperial loyalty in the latter years of the First World War. The new law will make it a crime for anybody to say ‘expressly or by implication’ that couples married in a registry office are ‘not truly and sufficiently married.’ Also the new law will make it a crime for anybody to say that children born of such marriages are ‘illegitimate’ or ‘born out of true wedlock.’ Anglican bishops and some of the laity in other Protestant churches are also unhappy about the bill. Alexander O’Hare, a Catholic priest, tells the Greymouth meeting that the bill will be ‘an unjustifiable and unwarranted interference with religious liberty.’ New Zealand will no longer be ‘God’s Own Country’ but ‘the Devil’s Own Country,’ adds a prominent lawyer, W J Joyce. The bill will soon pass through both houses of parliament and become law.
​
Grey River Argus, 24 September 1920

A lot of conservative people are saying that the First World War and the postwar years have ushered in a more relaxed code of sexual morality. A clergyman speaking at the Dunedin Men's Mission reports an ‘alarming increase’ in the number of men walking out on their marriages and ‘a growing tendency to open adultery and a great increase in immorality.’ The Otago Daily Times editorialises today that there was probably no time in the history of New Zealand ‘when the marriage relation was more lightly entered upon by both sexes and when the consequent parental responsibilities were less seriously regarded, if indeed not altogether evaded.’ The newspaper goes on to say: ‘The crop of divorces and separations, the frequency of wife desertions, the multiplication of orphanages ... to say nothing of the continually reported cases of infanticide, abortion, and other sexual offences, constitute alarming phenomena.’ At the same time, the Otago Daily Times astutely observes that perhaps the real change is not in behaviour but in frankness and honesty. ‘It is not safe ... to assume that the social morality of to-day is on a lower level than, say, fifty years ago; only with the spread of knowledge and a wider outlook public opinion on such matters as marriage and morality has undergone a surprising change and the expression in everyday life differs considerably.’

Otago Daily Times, 22 September 1920

Thomas Wilford, lawyer and newly chosen leader of the Liberal Party, has just given an important speech in Petone about parliamentary politics. He talks about how his party stands in the centre between the Labour Party and, on the right, the Reform Party. The Liberal Party stands ‘as a strong wall or buttress against extreme Toryism and extreme Labour.’ He calls on all ‘moderate’ Labour voters to support Liberalism and turn their backs on socialism . At the moment the Liberal Party gets the support of many skilled workers as well as a good many white collar workers, shopkeepers, workshop owners and some small farmers. Wilford is not getting very strong backing from Liberal members of parliament, however; the party is in some disarray. Labour and Reform hope that Liberalism will soon collapse. Politics can then become a simple competition between left and right. The Liberal Party will keep going, though, and will be more or less as strong at the end of the 1920s as at the beginning.
​
The Press, 21 September 1920

Israel Cohen is drawing large crowds while touring New Zealand on behalf of the Zionist movement. Zionism aims at creating a Jewish national state in Palestine. New Zealand troops, together with others from the British Empire, invaded and occupied Palestine during the First World War. William Massey, prime minister and leader of the parliamentary Reform Party, says the Jews are ‘a marvellous people.’ He speaks ardently in favour of making the new imperial territory a national state for Jews. Sir Robert Stout, an elderly Liberal, says that ‘the Semitic race, of which the Jews form a part, is one of the greatest the world has seen.’ Nobody, he claims, ‘can object to their desire to return to the country they so love ... they ask for the right to live in peace in Palestine, with no privileges beyond those enjoyed by the other peoples in that land.’ Cohen points out that at the moment there is ‘a slight political difficulty’ since ‘there are some 500,000 Arabs there, and only 80,000 Jews.’ The Arabs, he adds, ‘consider that they have grievances against the Jews.’ Jews have full legal rights in New Zealand but are often jeered at or looked down on by large numbers of people in nearly every social group.

The Dominion, 6 September 1920; New Zealand Truth, 18 September 1920

The Evening Post, one of the leading Liberal newspapers in the country, editorialises today about the way many people feel betrayed by how things have gone since the end of the First World War. Although the country has won a ‘Victory’ against its supposed foreign enemy, ‘the danger to the Nation is actually greater now than it was during the War.’ Citizens went to war because they thought they were fighting for a fairer, juster, more equal society. ‘During the war everyone agreed, in principle, that ... peace must bring in its train a more even distribution of things; that the economic equation must be revised, even if something had to be broken.’ The newspaper claims that since the war there has been almost no improvement in social justice and equality. One outcome is a ‘widespread revulsion of feeling against vested interests’ controlled by the wealthy. The fight for ‘a more even distribution of things’ goes on. ‘The war was only the beginning.’

Evening Post, 17 September 1920

The landed gentry of the southern provinces have just gathered together for this year’s ball held by the Christchurch Hunt Club. Hundreds of beautifully dressed guests were welcomed to the ballroom last night by a ‘rousing “Tally ho!” from the huntsman’s horn.’ An orchestra played in a gallery lined with black and groups of hunting emblems. ‘Needless to say, some very beautiful and stylish gowns, many of them imported from London and Continental fashion centres, were worn.’ The cloths and colours included gold tissue, gold lace, white satin, jade green georgette, blue brocade, blue and gold brocade, pale rose brocade, jewelled net, ivory lace, pink tulle, pale pink georgette, pink and silver brocade, turquoise blue brocade, pink brocaded marquisette, ivory crepe de Chine, royal blue satin, lemon-coloured georgette ... Gonda Teschemaker, wearing a ‘lovely gown having a foundation of rich violet satin, with draping of georgette in the same shade,’ one day will marry the hunt club whip, wealthy landowner John Hutton Grigg of Longbeach. She enjoys an income of thousands of pounds a year from family investments not only in land but also, like most of the old gentry, in mortgages, bonds, debentures and shares in mercantile firms, coal, gas, cement, shipping, publishing and insurance companies, banking and the rubber industry in Malaya. Although wealth is shared out more equally now than in nineteenth century New Zealand, these families are still very rich and powerful, and continue to stick together very tightly.

The Press, 13 August 1920
​