The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1966. The Spy Who Never Was

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1966. The Spy Who Never Was

Popular opinion usually runs against spies and security agents except when they are glamorous — and therefore probably fictional —or when, to the public advantage, they are conspicuously successful or, more often probably, inconspicuously efficient In times that pass for peace the existence of even a counter-agent in a free society makes citizens uneasy—much more uneasy, in fact, than the possible presence of persons who would exploit the freedom of that society to foster ends that are contrary to its interests. When the presence of such persons is revealed their exposure may carry little conviction because, for diplomatic or security reasons, the full Import of their activity remains undisclosed. Citizens expect, as a matter of course, that a Government will be sensitive to and responsive to overt political pressures and activities. It is nothing new for Governments to be interested also in assessing the character of clandestine political activities. Ambivalent as the public attitude may be towards those who are employed to inform the State of these activities a Government which neglects to inform itself of the character and potential importance of such activities would be regarded as having failed to protect the interests of the community. So New Zealand has a security intelligence service endowed with no more real powers than the private citizen.

Privacy and freedom of expression are highly prized; and when they appear to be attacked those who have been denied them are right to complain and others may have some right to protest on their behalf. But the loud protestation of a principle does not prove an injustice in a particular case. The commotion in the University of Auckland over the presence of a Government intelligence man in a political studies class and the consequent fuss in Parliament have been quite out of proportion to the supposed injury to the freedom of students and staff. If any real injury has been done to academic standards and to the orderly progress of studies it has been done by the students who initiated the protest and by the university administrators who responded too hastily to it. Those who might be supposed to be most concerned at the presence of Mr Godfrey are the fellow-students in his class. From all the accounts available to the public they appear to have been least concerned. Those who enrolled Mr Godfrey—the university and his professor—were responsible for his presence in the first place. They have been the only ones to change their minds about the influence he might have; and they have done so because of the actions of students least concerned but most determined to have their views acknowledged. Who among students or staff has been deterred from expressing opinions, conventional, radical, or even subversive? What action has been taken or is likely to be taken against’ anyone—except Mr Godfrey? Often enough students seek public acceptance of their views; and if they judge their opinions to be of public importance on one occasion is it unreasonable that the State might think their opinions or the activities of two visiting students from Russia might be of public importance on another? It would be unwisely complacent to say that, because no harm has been done by Mr Godfrey to the rights of his fellow-students, no-one need be alert to the need to protect free expression in the universities and in all other places/ It may be suspected that Mr Godfrey has done a good deal more to preserve that freedom and the tolerance of free expression than all those who have made a hue and cry about an imagined intrusion on people who have proclaimed exemption from public notice but have gone to great and disproportionate lengths to obtain it. Poets And Peasants “ Myself I must remake ”, said Yeats near the end of an industrious life. Mr Louis Johnson would have it otherwise: young poets, he told the third annual poetry school in Wellington, should leave New Zealand while they have plenty of time because “ there “ is a lack of tension in the New Zealand way of life “ that inhibits the imagination ”. Is Mr Johnson saying that our society must mend its ways to make New Zealand a land fit for poets? Must there be more strife and tension to trigger the muse? Must there, in short, be more ulcers for more anthologies? New Zealanders might well think this a poor bargain. But the argument does not stand much examination. If the environment is indeed uncongenial, does it not produce the very tensions that Mr Johnson thinks a poet requires? Good poets, however, have seldom been muted, even by outright hostility. Rather have they been stimulated by the challenge; for the mark of greatness in poets, as well as in peasants, is often the will and ability to master the environment, not to follow the line of least resistance—in this case to run elsewhere. Milton, copying documents for much of his life till his sight failed, rose nobly above his confines; Burns’s furrow in poetry survives long after his ploughman’s days were done; and Chaucer and Shakespeare, born into modest respectability, were not hampered by it Because of our long dependence on other nations and our good fortune, New Zealanders may tend to lack a capacity for the tragic emotions; but the work of other New Zealand poets has shown us that imagination has not been stunted. If poetry may be defined as the power of seeing the whole in the part, then our poets should not neglect the part that is New Zealand to give them a clear vision of the whole of life. Let them go away, by all means; but let them not forget that, by and large, New Zealand is not uncongenial for the artist, and that, in the stress, pace, and tensions they will find in other countries there may be precious little opportunity for reflection.