CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 84, 10 April 1945, Page 4

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

PRISON" DISCIPLINE To the Editor I am 110 sentimentalist, but, like Isabel Cluett, I found the story of the sufferings of Patrick Joseph O'Brien a moving one. It was the more so because of the apparent and admirable restraint of the young Irish veteran of Dunkirk. Moving as that story was, and revealing as were his experiences of the need for a complete investigation of our prison' methods, they were neither as moving to pity nor as revealing of human weakness as the letter of Isabel M. Cluett concerning the question. To a starkly simple exposition of facts (which, to my mind, have not been at all convincingly answered in official statements) she brings bitterness and distortion. What her purpose is, Heaven knows, but her use of the phrases, "persecuted exile . . . fingering his rosary . . . something of a rebel . . . prefers to martyrise himself," all reveal a bitterness of soul and pen that does not enhance whatever cause, religious or temporal, the lady espouses. The man was Irish. What of it? He was at Dunkirk." He "fingered his rosary." The phrase in the story, as I have looked it up, was "They permitted me to keep my rosary beads. For this I was thankful. I had said my prayers on them on the beach at Dunkirk." There is a vital difference there, and it calls for no bitter sneers. "Something of a rebel"? There will always be rebels, and we can be thankful for them, as long as there is injustice and ignorance in the world. Isabel Cluett pays tribute in words to the principle that "to shut men in cages like beasts is wrong." but thinks there is nothing can be done about it "until some better means of restraining lawbreakers is devised." St. Patrick's Day may have had some part in the story, but Good Friday had more. Nothing better will ever be devised if, like troubled Pilate, we ever wash our hands at the threat, "Thou art no friend of Caesar"; (i.e. the status quo.) C.T.T.