DISTURBANCES IN PUBLIC PLACES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1940, Page 8

DISTURBANCES IN PUBLIC PLACES

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Recently there have been several instances of soldiers in uniform participating in disturbances in public places. This is a matter which must in a democratic State be viewed with extreme regret. It is one. of the cardinal principles of our social organisation that no citizen may attempt to take the law into his own hands. It is true that a soldier may be expected to object to hearing pacifist speeches, but this gives him no power or right to apply violence to the person of the speaker. If the speaker makes seditious or subversive statements, f he breaks the law and can be dealt v.-ith; if he causes an obstruction of traffic, he again breaks the law and can, and has been, dealt with; but there is only one authority which has any right to deal with him at all, and that is the State acting through its police power. To hold otherwise would be to strike at the very roots of orderly life in a civilised community. If anyone disapproves of any views so strongly that he cannot control himself when they are openly expressed, he should stay away and not listen to them. The spirit of tolerance is the life blood of demo-* cracy, and no one, not even a soldier who has enlisted to fight for democracy, can be excepted from the general rule.

Last Friday night the disturbance outside the Wellington Opera House did not, fortunately, amount to a great deal, but one soldier was afterwards heard to say to another: "There weren't enough of us this time, ; Tut we'll get him (meaning the speaker) next time." Can one not address an earnest plea to our national sanity that the Capital City may be spared such an occurrence as may perhaps be intended? In time of war much, even freedom of speech, may have to give way to military necessity, but this plea cannot excuse personal violence on the part of any individual citizen. The law is there, it is adequate, and can be enforced in the proper manner. For such principles the civilian must fight at home just as strenuously as the soldier at the front, lest, when tne soldier returns, he may leave the war won in the field and find it lost at home.—l am, etc.,

LIBERTY.