PLEA FOR LIBERATION

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9676, 2 June 1917, Page 8

PLEA FOR LIBERATION

To the Editor “N.Z, Times." Sir, —Very few thoroughly respectable citizens will probably agree with me when 1 assert that logically and eqiutably the time has ainved lor liberating the leaders ot the labour unions who aiu at present in gaol tor “sedition." .at least they may not agree with me until they see my point D t view. Lot us clear the ground. I believe in conscription. I believe that in time of war ail ablebodied men should be tailed to liie colours, rich and poor alike, without exception. After that it should bo the duty of the State to devise means for ascertaining as nearly as possible those who should serve in the fields and factories and those who should servo in the firing line. There will always he anomalies, of course, simply because there will always be anomalies, hardships and injustices in any system humanly devised. Very well, that is my point of view. But there is another Doint of view. There are men amongst us who have proclaimed in effect that liberty and freedom are words meaning that each citizen shall be a law unto himself, that he shall obey his own whims and impulses, and submit to no discipline except that of his own devising. Whimsically enough those people call themselves Socialists, whose slogan is “Workers, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains!" However, we have as a community laid hands on the leaders of these peculiar people and cast them into gaol. Our authority for having done this is not an Act of Parliament made by the people’s representatives assembled, but by a War lleguiation hastily devised by a Cabinet behind closed doors to meet an emergency which Parliament could not, and therefore did uot contemplate, much less anticipate. Circumstances have arisen to justify the making of those regulations, but circumstances have also arisen which have rendered the administration of those regulations anomalous between two sets of persons —persons who for the protection of the community we have sent to gafll; and persons who equally for the protection of the community and tie preservation of law, order and good government we have permitted to enter into recognisances for good behaviour. Now- it must be said in fairness to the men who are in gaol that restriction of freedom of speech was an idea to which they had not been accustomed. They had not long been in the habit of shouting their predilections from the housetops that they came into contact with the War Regulations very much as a law-breakcrr comes into collision with a policeman’s club—head on. But these men are normally not .law-breakers, not felons. ■ Far from it; they are simply thoroughly well-meaning conscientious people who have not habituated themselves to the acceptance of the view that things that are, are things that ought to be. Very well, these men took a shortrouge view of the 'War Regulations; they elected to risk the terrors of the "law,” and they are now nerving a term of eleven months’ imprisoritaent. But the makers of these regulations have placed themselves in this position, they have bargained with one set of “seditiouists" and agreed to liberate them on their own recognisances for future good behaviour. How, then, logically can they keep the original and less venal offenders in gaol for the full term? We say they cannot reconcile the situation either ethically or logically. If one set of men lias been set at liberty, the others should certainly be under similar conditions. It bas been demonstrated to these men that while i! is an admirable thing in times of pence that there shall be complete individual freedom, it is in the last sense impolitic that individual idiosyncrasy, however idealistic, should be permitted to unduly intrude itself in time of war. Having enforced that lesson it is bad business in every way to beep them there any longer to "rub it in,” to create a permanent sense of grievance and disaffection amongst the people whom these men represent and typify. They should be released on their own recognisances in the same way that the other and later offenders were released; on the same principle which actuated Campbell-Bannerman in releasing those who were conceived to have been wrongheaded lovers of freedom at the termination of the Boer war. There is another prisoner whom I should like to plead for. viz.: the man who was given eleven months for alleged seditious utterance on the unsupported testimony of his mother-in-law ! I venture to sav that this was a thoroughly anomalous verdict; just as anomalous as that under ■ which a man was convicted by a magistrate—-

out afterwards acquitted by a judge—for having irsed "seditious” language m the heat of a personal dispute with teilovr labourer. The fact is that it is very hard for oven the best of us. magistrates or Cabinet Ministers included, to keep our heads in these distressful and disturbing da vs. We arc all liable to make mistakes as these men have done. For that reason it would be wise and politic, I contend, for those charged with the Ulministration to temper justice with mercy. I am. etc., ONLOOKER. Palmerston North. May 31st.