A COMMUNITY OPEN FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 148, 25 June 1935, Page 6

A COMMUNITY OPEN FORUM.

I liope our City Fathers have noted the letter headed and signed "Community Open Forum" which appeared in this correspondence column of June 18. If not I would draw their attention to it, and at the same time take' the opportunity to endorse it. But I would go a little further than the introducer and suggest the smaller Concert Chamber be made available for public discussions upon current non-party and non-sectarian matters, say, on one day each week, from 12.30 p.m. until '2.30 p.m. This would provide a means of contact between the specialist of a particular line of thought or investigation, and an intelligent section otherwise difficult to reach, the business or about town man, many of whom m the evening could not be dragged out by wild horses. The action of our new councillors in restoring, free speech recommends them to me as men of sound common sense, for attempts to suppress a belief containing anything of truth, or an ideal in any way desirable, compresses it, and. where the suppressive body can, by any stretch of the imagination, he suspected of bias, relative sympathy for the suppressed is aroused. Moreover, it is certain evidence of a warped understanding to doubt that freedom of speech can be prbductive of that which is other than in the general interest, or that what is sound may, for long, he checked by travesty —sitnpressed it cannot be. W. SCOTT.