CIGARETTE AND LATCHKEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 18, 22 January 1929, Page 6

CIGARETTE AND LATCHKEY.

British magistrates, like the Privy Council, are often called upon to decide queer "cases, and three cases recently adjudicated upon had to do with the rights and duties of the younjrer generation. A headmaster was summoned for caning a boy for smoking, a father for depriving liis twenty-year-old daughter of her latchkey, and a girl of twenty-one lor failing to register. The Latin Grammar, as an illustration of the ruie that a substantive agrees in case with that to which it is in apposition, gives "We boys will imitate our father, Lollius," and this bov was merely endeavouring to put precept into practice With the full consent of Lollius himself. But the magistrates decided that a headmaster had a perfect right to prohibit smoking among his scholars. They agreed in this case with that to which the boy was in opposition. But to deprive bis daughter of her latchkey merely because she stopped out late at night, despite the magisterial decision in favour of papa, has struck the Association of Women Clerks as preposterous. Thev have made an official protest. They point out, with what relevancy we know not, that in another'year the daughter will have a Tote equally with her father. Do they intend to introduce }i bill to compel fathers to give a latchkey to their daughters? Or do they look 011 the possession of a vote as establishing complete equality in all respects between father and daughter? In the third case the possession of a vote was scorned by one of the newly-enrolled young women on the ground that it merely compelled her to vote "for some idiot who Wants to loaf." The magistrate suggested that she should vote for the least idioMc candidate, which she reluctantly agreed to do. This will call for the exercise of that feminine intuition of which we hear so much. The day of complete freedom for the younger generation. is not yet. Magistrates still* lean to the side of parental and school authority. What is to be done about it? Perhaps the Association of Women Clerks will unite with the Association of Public School Boys and devise some way of preventing such "preposterous" decisions in future. They could enlist the active support of "some of the idiots who want to loaf." W.AL