FREEDOM OF SPEECH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22076, 4 April 1935, Page 15

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Sir, —As an actual believer in free- | dom of speech, I wish that Professor | Sewell would leave the subject alone. His ill-considered utterances upon it j will sooner or later supply the enemies j of freedom of speech with an excuse j for restrictions. There seems good reason to believe that Professor Sewell does not believe in freedom of speech at all. Does the Russian system which he so frequently and enthusiastically j recommends permit freedom of speech? At two public meetings within a week I have listened to sarcastic references by Professor Sewell to freedom of speech as we have it here, but the 1 climax of the professor's activities in \ this respect was reached in his address to the Rationalist Society on Sunday evening, when he announced his belief in the theory of the "class war',' and declared the right of the "working class" to dispossess the "bourgeoisie" by "legal or illegal" means. "Liquidate." of course, is the proper Russian term. Is this the manner in which Professor Sewell proposes to exemplify the principles of freedom of speech? It seems to me to be rather an unintentional tribute to the social order that the professor habitually condemns that there is no question of his right to freely express this point of view. I would personally defend his right to do so. I merely object to the pretence that the Russian method would secure freedom of speech. A short time ago I heard a distinguished authority upon Russia in the person of Bernard Shaw give an interesting account of the Russian reaction to freedom of speech. He said that if your j political opinions are considered un- | satisfactory by the ruling class there vou may be * haled before a secret tribunal where at a suitable opportunity when you are not looking a pistol is put to your ear, and, said Mr. Shaw with great relish, "you wake up in Heaven." The story does credit to Mr. Shaw's perspicacity and powers of divination, implying as it does that your political views may be all right m Heaven if not in Russia. I am a critic of the social system myself, but thank goodness we haven't anything like that in New Zealand (yet), and, with all due respect to Professor Sewell, I hope we never shall. It is a queer reflection upon oar education system that the very professors of it should despise it and discard it (the only permanently constructive method) in favour of tlie method of suppression brute force and violence described by Bernard Shaw. G. Henby.