Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1932. D.O.R.A.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 January 1932, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1932. D.O.R.A.

There are many laws in New Zealand which are irritating to the law-abiding public, but Britain has at least one act which outclasses anything the Dominion can produce in the way of stupid legislation. Embracing a set of laws and restrictions which Mr Herbert Metcalfe, a Woolwich magistrate, has described as “stupid and idiotic,” the Defence of the Realm Act (unpopularly known as “Dora”) continues to irritate the British public as fiercely as it did during the war. Hotels and restaurants are opened and closed at erratic hours, traders are hampered, and the police courts are kept busy coping with charges which only the prosecuting officials can be induced to take seriously. “The person or persons responsible for D.O.R.A. ought to be taken out and publicly hanged,” exclaimed Mr Metcalfe to an approving audience in his magisterial court. “It makes me tired,” he went on, “to have to administer stupid and idiotic laws of this description. ■ It is these fatuous fools, who seized upon the war to put across people restrictions of all kinds.” Stronglanguage, indeed, and language which found prompt action in the dismissal of a charge against a shopkeeper who was alleged to have sold a packet of biscuits' at an hour when “Dora” insisted that he should sell only cooked meats! As a matter of fact, the tyranny of D.O.R.A. has been tempestuously"resented for years, but a long succession of Home Secretaries has refused to heed the clamour for its removal from the Statute Book. It is now suggested that one of the most popular actions that could possibly be taken by the new National Government would be to abolish the law and thus restore the golden age of individual liberty. Nothing, however, has yet been heard of any such commendable intention, notwithstanding the cries of magistrates and the uproar in the Press. The most serious aspect of the anomalies which arise from day to day is that the law, as such, is being brought into contempt in the sense that it is no longer re-

garcled as a stigma to be prosecuted for offences against the Defence of the Realm Act. Rather is it looked upon as a sort of social distinction. And these, by the way, are a few of the anomalies in question: A fishmonger may sell fried fish after 8 p.m., but he may not sell a kipper or a bloater; a chemist may serve you with an ice-bag or medicine after 8 p.m., but not with a packet of razor blades or a tooth-brush; newlycoolced pies may be sold at any hour, but pies cooked on the previous day may not be sold after the fixed hour; by going to a pub-lic-house you can buy tobacco, cigarettes, and matches when they must be refused you at a. sv eet shop, although this shop may remain open after 8 p.m. Surely the War Precaution Acts in New Zealand were neverlike this!