"BULLYING THE PUBLIC"

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10541, 18 March 1920, Page 5

"BULLYING THE PUBLIC"

TREATMENT OF A SHIP'S PASSENGERS.

An editorial comment in the Sydney "Daily Telegraph" of March has the following: ' 'lf Australians were not the most long-suffering people in the universe the treatment of the Mantua passengers would provoke a publio outcry. Just as tho ship was about to start the passengers wen© summoned ashore to have their passports examined. Having answered the summons, they found no military officer to examine them. When tho officer did at last appoar he sent the passengers on hoard without doing nioro than glance at their passports. There are two comments to be made on. this incident. In tho finst place the military administration should ho punished for inefficiency, it blundered in having no one ready to examine the passports at the proper time, and again in not being at hand when the passengers were called on shore. But even if a cohort of officers had been at hand, what excuse is there for continuing the passport system to-day 'i The system was invented in imitation of Now Zealand, when it was thought that conscription might be introduced in Australia. Tho only reason for continuing it is the reluctance of officials to give up any shred of their right to bully the public. Oversea passengers suffer enough from high fares and crowded ships. It is time that their relatives who come out to see them off should no longer he treated as if they were conspirators anxious to blow up the ship, or to smuggle anarchists, or conspirators, or pacifists, or other nefarious persons out of the jurisdiction of the War Precautions Act."