Letters to The Editor

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21363, 4 January 1935, Page 7

Letters to The Editor

Correspondenta who do oot uoiuply wuh tut rales set out in tho last column of our Leader P»ga will ezcuee us ito.n noticing lieir letters. THE DAIRY INDUSTRY TO THE BDITOB OF THE PEESS. Sir, —In your correspondence columns of December 24, 1934, a letter appeared signed by A. W. Russell. In it he asks Mr Agar a question which is of paramount importance to .the dairy industry at the present time. What can be the matter with Mr Agar refusing as he has done to make public, information which the dairy People have every right to know? Hundreds are asking the same question as that asked by Mr Russell, and also (> asking who has been "wire pulling." thereby causing the Government to leave the zoning clause out of the Agriculture (Emergency Powers) Act, which clause was strongly recommended by the Dairy Commission in its report. Mr Agar is a member of the present Dairy Board. Why this woe-stepping? If Mr Russell wants an answer to i"? Question his best plan is to go to Wellington and spend two or three aays interviewing the Premier and Mr Coates. If he does, I hope he is as persuasive as other gentlemen who nave interviewed those Ministers before the Agriculture (Emergency powers) Act was brought before the Mouse: and apparently they were successful.—Yours, etc., BLISSFUL. January 2, 1935. SEATING ACCOMMODATION IN THE SQUARE «0 TBM SDITOB Or THE PKBSI. Sir,—As a fellow sufferer I thoroughly agree with every statement made by "A.M.J." regarding seating accommodation in the Square. It r eally is beyond all reason. I do hope some move will be made immediately 'o improve the present impossible situation.—Yours, etc., A SOUTHERN VISITOR. January 3. 1935. AX UNSATISFACTORY TANK TO 188 BDITOB 0* TBS ta»3S. I r -—I have a concrete tank built ?■»* '" the t ? round wilh a capacity of /zo gallons. It is full of vain water. and filtered through shingle. When °e iron tanks ran dry we commenced nf\l helank '" question: but the smell used Water is ?uch that St cannot be I should like to know the cause of imon y J he waler ha * such a putrid a?! 11 - The tank has a concrete top, lit r,°. thln S can get into it. Nothing a th 's.has happened before. * s "hilar-sized tank built on the win ,■ hol ding lime water from the for J,° beca me nutrid. but uS?ng it Tf *u' ]t be came right again. t n „ tl l ose tanks had roofs over them "> Protect them from the sun, would Jl be a remedy?— Yours, etc., j=,„ „ H.M.A. January 3. 1935. FLOGGING *0 THB *DITO» 01 THE PB»S6. Sir,—With Mr Mackie's objections to yws insinuation that those who object to our out-of-date penal system

I are therefore "in sympathy with crime," I thoroughly agree. Speaking for myself, I abhor crime; and that is one reason why I object to our system, which I have watched, too often, breeding crime (through resentment at over-punishment). and teaching it (by forced association with criminals, in prison). We are, in New Zealand, miles behind the view of the English Lord Chief Justice, and our present methods will never succeed in making "self-respecting members of the State" out of those we merely shut away in prison for long terms, let alone flogging. I doubt if your correspondent, No Sympathy with Crime" understands his subject any more thoroughly than did "Tika." Flogging has, in fact, not been very fortunate in its advocates so far in this correspondence, for both have written with more wrath than reasoning. Will you then bear with me if I supply some possible arguments myself? We might, e.g.. be told that 'a good thrashing has improved many a boy"; also that "flogging is used in the Navy." A naval friend tells me, however, that "the cat" is no longer used in the Navy, and all flogging there tends to decrease. He considers it an indecent punishment, even so. But what I want to stress is this: that a flogging by schoolmaster, father, or superior officer is not, morally, at all the same thing as a judicial flogging; and it is above all the moral, not the physical, aspect that should weigh with us. , The flogged boy or sailor, if he feels -any rancour about a punishment normal to his school or service, feels it only against an individual. But the whole weight of society is in the lash that falls upon the criminal; and that abnormal punishment is expressly intended to be, and is felt to be, a deliberate degradation. Well, in consequence, the danger is that the criminal will thereafter be chiefly concerned with trying to pay the whole of society back—by further crime. I do not seem to know of that "governor of Dartmoor" who, according to your j correspondent, says that a "man once flogged never comes back" —who is he? But there was once a Dartmoor warder, who wrote a book called "His Majesty's Guests," and in that he freely expressed his loathing of the cat as "confirming criminality." Here in New Zealand, too, only the other day, we had a man who had been flogged for robbery with violence repeating the offence within a few months after release. No! Your correspondent must clearly seek a much more "conclusive proof than the one he alleges; and I doubt if he will find one. But. again, 1 might be told that the young man in this case "deserved it." It is not so easy, perhaps, to say what any of us "deserves"—or what the whole of our society "deserves"? While many of its members practice loose sexual conduct, or enjoy filthy jokes, or tempt girls, or each other, downward, perhaps it "deserves" just such a criminal? And it will certainly not right itself by laying all such sins only on his bleeding back? In any ? aS «J s 5t far more fruitful for society to think how to reclaim its erring member than how to degrade him past redemption, and so to its own further detriment. One point more: Not the least dangerous aspect of this dangerous punishment is that it tends to divert disgust from the crime to the law which authorises it. The best way out, I suggest, is to secure an amendment of tnat law. so as in abolish tho ounish-