MURDER AND LAWLESSNESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18162, 26 April 1921, Page 6

MURDER AND LAWLESSNESS

MR. HOLLAND WANTS OFFENDER RELEASED FROM GAi . SIR FRANCIS BELL’S POINTED ' REPLY. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, April 24. Mr. Holland, M.P., wrote to Sir Francis Bell, Attorney-General, draw ing atention to a sentence of three months passed on a number of Wellington Socialist Party for having allegedly sold copies of a communist programme, and other pamphlets. Mr Holland, while not necessarily endorsing the views of the writers in regard to their tactics, holds that the book contains a most valuable presentation of the ease for constructive industrialism. While urging the release of the imprisoned man, Mr. Holland says scores of returned soldiers in possession of the banned books do not hesitate to circulate the same, and ciaim that they fought for mental as well as political freedom. He says they know that there can be neoither political nor industrial freedom unless there is most unrestricted liberty in every department of human thought. These soldier constituents of his, he alleges, strongly resent “repressive legislation and administration which makes animals of men. W’hose only offence is that they seek to know how men of other lands are thinking. He asks j how these men stand with regard to, the law, and warns the Government ! that it is making the magistracy and the police court the agencies ot con- I ditions as hateful and hated as any-1 thing Prussia and Russia ever knew in the terroristic days of their liberty, destroying the imperialism force sustained and foundationed on blood and iron absolutism. It is not well, he says, that New Zealand should follow an example so pregnant, with danger. Sir Francis Bell, while agreeing with Mr. Holland regarding rights and liberty, points out that the pamphlets,, advocated in plainest manner bloodshed and violence as ‘ methods by which its propaganda were to be carried into effect. Mr. ■ Holland’s words can only mean that it is not criminal to advocate murder as a method of attaining social or political conditions or constitutional change. That is an issue between the Government of a civilised country and offenders of the class for whom pardon is asked. Sir Francis points out that, in a country where universal suffrage prevails, a party can obtain power by constitutional methlods. The Minister says: “It is neither unlawful nor seditious to advocate the wildest form of Socialism and Communism. What is unlawful and seditious is to advocate murder and violence as legitimate methods for the attainment of political ends. If your contentions were carried to logical conclusions, it would be legitimate for any section of the community to drill and arm with the avowed object of slaughtering the majority who could not be otherwise coerced." You must therefore take my answer to be that the Government of New Zealand does not now interfere, and does not propose to interfere, with liberty of speech or action, but that it does intende to prevent, and will use all powers to prevent, violence and lawlessness, and that its officers will, in accord-

ance with the duty imposed upon them by law, endeavour to bring to justice persons who refuse to comply with that condition, and that the Government will not establish the practice of exercising prerogative of pardon in favour of such persons when convicted. Your contention that the mere possession of literature ! of the hind is an offence is perhaps I technically correct, but that is not an offence seriously contemplated by the law. The circulation of such documents, or the possession of a number of such documents, obviously for the purpose of circulating, is in itself plainly a deliberate advocacy of murder, and therefore criminal and punishable.