The Censor in History.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18900, 15 January 1927, Page 14

The Censor in History.

On our Literary Page tins morning will be found an article reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement and abridged, wc need hardly add, with some reluctance. If those only knowhow precious liberty is who have had it taken from ibem, those who are threatened with the loss of it, even partially and temporarily, can never afford to relax their vigilance. It of course seems absurd in the second quarter of the twentieth century to be on guard against a Tyrannus, but Tyrants still exist, and still, as opportunities come to them, act in the ancient way. And we are not thinking now of merely vulgar, recognised and self-confessed lyrants like Europe's two or three Dictators. We are thinking of the Tyranny in our own Dominion, a composite of all the latent tyrannies of thousands of earnest citizens, which censors our books and would, if it could, shackle the newspapers; of the Tyranny which has invaded the liberty of the Press in Australia, and more recently and more seriously, of the Press in South Africa. We are thinking of the preposterous requirements of the law during election campaigns in those two great Commonwealths, and of what the law might be and do in New Zealand if, say, the Mayor of Christchurch were Prime Minister and, had the present Prime Minister's majority. We are thinking of all the timidities, bigotries, and blind and furtive fears in every community which can still drive it into repression as soon as its pleasant prejudices are threatened; and not to think of them is to leave liberty very much exposed to the Administrative Tyrant. It is a curious experience to look back over six centuries and reflect that men in the mass have usually responded more promptly to a call to repress than to a oall to set free. Milton's tremendous words in 1644 have not yet sunk into the hearts and minds of more than a small proportion of our race, and until they do sink in, and become not merely a vague conviction but a fiery faith, we are threatened, as the writer of this vigorous survey points out, with the loss of complete nationhood.