RIGHTS OF MAGNA CHARTA

Southland Times, Issue 24499, 29 July 1941, Page 4

RIGHTS OF MAGNA CHARTA

“Not Won Overnight”

A reminder to his hearers that the present war was being fought to preserve the rights and liberties that thengrandfathers and great-grandfathers had fought to win was given by the Postmaster-General (the Hon. P. C. Webb) in the speech that he delivered at the opening of the new post office in Invercargill yesterday. He said that everything our forefathers had fought and suffered for was in the melting pot now. About 100 years ago Lord Shaftesbury and otheis had fought against the employment of young children in factories and mines. They had been derided and denounced, but they had fought on and had eventually won. The rights of Magna Charta had not been brought into being overnight. Men had suffered and died for those rights. N civilization had evolved anything better than democracy, which meant that the people of a country had a voice in the government of the country in the interests of the people. The peoples of the British Commonwealth and of America alone enjoyed the freedom of democracy today, and they must see to it that it was preserved. “We are fighting for our own freedom and for the freedom of enslaved people all over the world,” Mr Webb continued. “These enslaved people know that when we gain the victory they, too, shall be free. Let us hope that the new civilization will be founded on the great Christian principle of the brotherhood of man. I am confident that victory will come. I am sure that Russia will give a good account of herself, and that Hitler and all that Hitler stands for will go down. In the new world after the war everything that makes for poverty, unemployment and war must be abolished.”