THE Thames Star. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1928. SUPPRESSION OF NAMES.

Thames Star, Volume LXII, Issue 17390, 30 March 1928, Page 4

THE Thames Star.

FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1928. SUPPRESSION OF NAMES.

"With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."—Lincoln.

Nobody can argue that there is not a law for the rich and a law for the poor when a Magistrate in Auckland suppresses the name of a doctor who pleads guilty to a charge of intoxication in a motor can, but finds no reason to extend the same consideration to "a respectable man in poor circumstances" who appears before him at the same sitting on a similar charge. Apparently the doctor's-of-fence was much the_ more serious, for he became involved in an accident in which his passenger was admitted to hospital, whereas the mechanic, according to the police, was merely arrested for safety's sake when lie was about to crank up his caiyhaving with him, too, a friend who was perfectly sober and could have driven him home. These facts tend to emphasise the injustice of the Magistrate's decision in imposing the penalty of publiity on one man and withholding it from the .other; but, even if the men had been equally culpable, we think that the Magistrate

should rather have published the doctor's name and suppressed the mechanic's, because' the community expects a higher standard oi>conduct from members of the medical profession than it expects from others not so fortunately situated. This view, we feel sure, would be accepted by the British Medical Association, which would probably be the last body in New Zealand to claim special consideration for those of its members who might forget the high standards demanded from the medical profession. And the public, too, are entitled to the fullest possible information about any medical man who cannot keep himself within the law in a matter so closely afferf.hg his professional efficiency.