Is it Wisdom or Folly ? TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2499, 5 February 1902, Page 45

Is it Wisdom or Folly ? TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,— Are we wise or foolish in allowing our press such unrestricted freedom of expression politically? Just that! The press is very powerful ; it is a wonderful schoolmaster ; the people, both igriorant and wise, do not really gauge the immense influence the floating literature of the ago has upon their minds — forming their opinions, building up their knowledge, broadening their views of the busy world — in fact, mentally feeding them; but for pll that tho influence is going on night and day, for good or ill. The German prees has said all sorts of nasty things lately; our press has retaliated, and said a lot more very nasty things. Our press, and later our statesmen, Have more than hinted at war. Tho capture or destruction of cur supposed enemy's fleet has been foreshadowed. The Black Sea has, by implication, been turned into a British lake, and the heads of the principal men, the leaders of the supposed enemy, carried shoulder high through our streets. Now, till this is very foolish, very foolish, and even dangerous. I know a Jot of Germans, I have many German friends, and T know something of the feelings of the weople, and I say em-r-hetically that all this outcry in even worse than foolish— it is downright fanaticism Such men as Stead, who for years has been belauding and heslobb?ring the Russian Czar and people, will do the lowest and meanest kind of literary work if thereby they can even hope to makp a i!Hm.-» for themselves. Wha* do we dj to thorn w h<it do we say to them' We buy the Revn-w of R-views! We purchase the polluting and defnmmg rags that traduce the honour of our brave me>i and would hurl th° nation into another bloody war. We don't =tor> to think! w e purchase the work of men and women who are defamine our country snJ our glorious old flag! We allow our own st&tesmen to pollute our honour and our name, aid take our money and live on our country. We call it freedom. We call that liberty. Wo call that kind of thing free speech. lib»rty of tho pre««. Ah! it i-= thnt kind of free speech, that kind of liberty, that kind of education, that i= crushing humanity to-day with the burdens of a bastard (wrilisotion. It is that kind of education which is fillinp the world with flaunting wealth and grinding poverty, with millionaire^ and naupers, with idleness and luxury on the one hnnd and soul-enslaving toil on the Q*hc\ Tlear what CarMe wrot<? over fifty years ago: '•W e will «=ay mournfully, in the presence of heaven and earth, that we stand speechless, and know not whnt to say. That a class of men, entitled to live sumptuously on the marrow of the earth, permitted simply — nay, entreated—to do nothing at all in return, wa-s never heretofore seen on the face of this planet.

. . . That it will have to find its duties and do them, or cUe that it must and will cease to be seen on the face of this planet, which is a working one, and not an idle one. . . .

It i 3 this idle class, in a state of transition, that is trying to get astride the world, that is turning the world upside down, seeking by the misdirection of education to live on the toil of the masses; it is this class who are setting nations by the ears, who are creating a thousand follies, and whose highest brain work is at the highest bidder's option. Friends, country, nations, all are slandered, all are vilified, and so long as the fruits resulting therefrom are of a profitable nature we never seem to want for creatures low enough to do the work." Let v? think more; let us try to see our own faults and the faults of our own countrymen ; let us not condemn ojthers while -we shelter slanderers within our own house; let us, in fact, try to be sensible men and women. When we think fit to punish traitors and prosecute slanderers who traduce and vilify the honour of the old flag and the brave men who sre upholding it and our rights, it will be t iT ne to look around for other people. — I am, etc.,

Calliofe,