CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 252, 23 October 1943, Page 4

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

RADIO CONTROL To the Editor. This latest edict of the unelected bureaucratic Minister of Broadcast' ing should stir the people to action now "before the last vestige of democratic freedom is filched from them. The Church has a Divine command to teach all people, and to have that teaching confined to within the .four walls of churches and one day per week at the command of the Minister, who repre sents only a section of the party system and not the people at all, i s> surely, indicative of that method of control which we are supposed to be fighting in the name of Christianity. This latest piece of dictatorship, typical of the encroachment on the freedom of the people which is occurring daily in other directions, provides the fullest justification for the existence of the Real Democracy Movement, which provides the means for the people to associate together in defence of their combined and individual rights against bureaucratic control. It istime to call a halt to the open and subtle suppression of the real truth in the interests of retention and increase of bureaucratic power. T. E. SOMERVILLE. Freedom of worship is one of the four freedoms included in the Atlantic Charter, and no administration must be allowed to interfere with the exercise of that freedom in any way whatsoever. - The people will be found just as ready to fight at home for that freedom, with all the means at their command, as they are to fight any other enemy overseas. Maintain the Star's strong stand. I have, no doubt, that the people will stand behind you and the combined churches in any action you may take to remove this oppressive measure and to restore to them the right for which they pay big license fees. Ultimate power lies in the hands of the people. G. HINTON KNOWLES. THE BROADCASTING BAN Pursuing the proposition that fanatical ratiocination (as opposed to rational thinking) always lands one in a ludicrous position logically, may I suggest that Mr. Shelley over- • looked the fact that his decision to forbid a broadcast of Thursday night's public business at the Town Hall, completely stultified his accompanying (and gratuitously contemp-' tuous) dictum that religious discussion, over the radio, should be confined to "the many Sundays of the year." Love is notoriously blind, but even Mr. Shelley's poetic self-appreciation ought not to have obscured from him the fact that hi( little homily was upon a religious issue: and he dribbled it on a week day. HUGH McHAIGH.