SALUTING THE FLAG.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18447, 7 January 1922, Page 10

SALUTING THE FLAG.

TO THE EDITOB. Sib,—“Britisher” has bow, I think, sufficiently shown the deplorable weakness of the arguments available for what might ba termed “loud patriotism.” He suggests it is sound Christian principle that a man should obey national coercion without protest and keep his religious principles in a separate compartment; that a man should be compelled to salute the flag or told' to quit the country, oven though a man’s country is his fate, not his choice—that in moat cases he cannot leave it if he would, and that he cannot shift his person or fortune without a permit! "Britisher” now further suggests that tolerance may become laxity, and that a man’s thought and utterance should; be dieciplincd I 1 While I thank “Britisher” for his attempt to reason with mo, I would urge him to consider the point that I do not object to salute the flag, but to do eo under compulsion. Repeatedly he has dodged this in the correspondence. I would urge him also to consider the extent to which commercial greed exists in the causes of wars and of supporting propaganda—the extent to which those who fight- “fall in” and those who don’t profit; that we are as sheep—the newspapers os directing dogs and the newspaper owners as the very x directors of human destiny; the fact that suppression of thought and utterance would, if successful, also suppress progress, and would mere likely fail to suppress at all, but merely substitute evolution for revolution. Every healthy man would surely have the vjplfaro of his country at heart, but yet have a -bitter hatred of "jingoism.”—! am. etc., Tolbbahcb.