The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 1921. MISPLACED CRITICISM

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10810, 28 January 1921, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 1921. MISPLACED CRITICISM

The Workers’ Educational Association has been lecturing the Chancellor of the University and the Senate thereof in a manner quite high-handed. That it has every right to do, if it thinks that its duty lies that way. With such hn opinion about anything the Chancellor and the University Senate may have done, the association would be wanting in its duty if it failed to protest. This is a free country, and the Workers’ Educational Association has all the rights implied by the general liberty enjoyed by all citizens. But this right of free criticism implies the duty of properly understanding all incidental facts. Now, was that duiy complied with in this lecture which the association undertook to inflict on the Chancellor and the Senate? Let us see the paragraph of the resolution conveying the censure of these grave and reverend signore. Here are the wordb: “That this meeting strongly resents the unjustifiable attack made by the Chancellor and some members of the Senate by conveying to the public the idea that the W.E.A. has been carrying on revolutionary propaganda, instead of performing the educational work for which it was formed.” Of these words it is impossible to mistake the meaning. They directly charge the Chancellor that he attacked the W.E.A. for carrying on revolutionary propaganda. The fact happens, of course, to be that neither the Chancellor nor anybody made any attack whatever on the association. The discussion in the Senate on the Chancellor’s reference to one person on the tutoring, or - lecturing, staff of the association, fairly reported as it was, had made it perfectly clear that no attack was made on the association or its methods. The discussion opened with statements that implied, or might have been taken to imply, that those who made them considered that the Chancellor’s reference to the tutorial gentleman concerned was an attack on the association and its methods. But what followed showed conclusively that the Chancellor had not attacked, and had not intended to attack, the association at all; that he had referred only to the opinions and conduct of the one person in question. It showed, moreover, that even that person had not been charged with teaching any revolutionary propaganda. This person, it had been made perfectly clear, had been attacked, not for any revolutionary opinions which he might hold, hut for withdrawing the promise he was alleged to have made not to teach those revolutionary opinions. This was so clear in the report, as anyone reading the account of this discussion can see for himself, that the Chancellor was able to reply with some felicity and perfect justice: “It seems that there is much need of a Workers’ Educational Association, when the secretary is apparently unable to read the printed reports.” That meant that no one understanding plain English could possibly see in the Chancellor’s report or in the report of the Senate discussion, the smallest support for the statement that the- Chancellor had in any way attacked the association. Professor Hunter sprang forward to the secretary’s defence on the ground that he had merely carried out his orders by forwarding the condemnatory resolution ; - and the Chanoellor promptly flattened him out by showing, in a short sentence, that whoever was responsible for the resolution, the Council as a whole, of course, had been proved by the resolution incapable of understanding plain Einglish. It is worthy of note that Professor Hunter, who had criticised the Chancellor’s reference to the tutor in question, did not defend the condemnatory resolution itself, but contented himself with exonerating the secretary from any responsibility for it. It would be hard to find stronger corroboration of the

fact that the Chancellor had made no attack on the W.E.A. The condemnatory resolution of the Council of the W.E.A. is proved by all the evidence in the case to be a wild assertion without a shadow of justification, a wanton aggression that ought never, in view of the known facts, to have been made. The aforesaid Council proceeded, in the second paragraph of its resolution, to welcome the decision to have inquiry made, and to urge the utmost promptitude in the making of the same. There the Council will have general support. The inquiry is to be into the general question of the way in which the funds granted by the University for W.rv. A. purposes have been used by the colleges. ■ One part of that inquiry, of course, concerns the particular tutor referred to by the Chancellor. The object of that particular inquiry is not to ascertain whether a person holding certain views was appointed to a tutorship—for that is admitted. Neither is the inquiry to ascertain whether that person taught those views in the exercise of his tutorship ; for that is not imputed to him, and it is admitted that he did not teach these views. The inquiry is as to whether he gave a promise before appointment not' to teach those views, of his, and, having, given that promise before appointment, did he after appointment withdraw the said promise, implying that he was free to teach his particular views at the public expense? That is the point to be settled by the inquiry. It can be settled without in any way raising the question of the general benefit of the workers’ education system—a question that has not been raised .by the Chancellor or anyone else; a question which has been quite unnecessarily suggested by the wild, unjustifiable attack made on the Chancellor of the University. The question to be settled is whether a person claiming to teach at the publio expense views which obviously cannot be taught at the public they can, indeed, be uttered at all under the law of the land—shall be allowed to do so.