THE PUBLIC’S BOOKS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 2

THE PUBLIC’S BOOKS

NEED FOR CENSORSHIP. It is to be hoped that serious attention will be given by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Customs to the representations now made by the New Zealand Centre of P.E.N., an international association of writers. This organisation, in resolutions it has forwarded to Mr Savage and Mr Nash, says that it appreciates the Government’s difficulties, but it believes that the Government would share its distaste of measures tending to restrain intellectual freedom. It is therefore suggested that the restrictions should not be applied to the “better class of cultural literature,” or to scientic and educational books. The first difficulty with this resolution as it stands is that there would be dispute among booksellers as to what is and what is not “cultural literature.” Bookselling is a trade from which reasonable profit has to be made and the prudent bookseller, if his import allowance is cut down, will obtain as far as possible supplies of literature which he knows can be turned over easily. The shops would soon be bankrupt if they had to carry heavy stocks of “cultural literature’” and scientific and educational works alone. What is necessary is that the trade should be allowed to carry on as it has done in the past. Before the restrictions were applied every taste could be served, but that is going to be impossible in the future if the restrictions stand.—Timaru Herald.