LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 12, 28 July 1919, Page 6

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

PICTURES AND EDUCATION Sir—Mi', Sievwright should know that it is exceedingly bud logic lo skip from the particular to the universal. Tlio statement "Jomi is a wad mau," however true it may be, does not warrant tlio general conclusion "all men are bad." Commenting 011 statements made by members ot the Council of Education regarding (ho popularity of objectionable picture plays, 1 asserted that "one might reasonably have expected that fifty years of free, secular, and f compulsory education would have sufficiently improved tlio public taste to make it impossible tor such a largo section of our people to delight in debasing pictures." Mr. Sievwright pretends to believe that this particular statement is equivalent to a. general declaration that our national system of education "has not had an elevating tendency." Of course, Mr. wright knows that a system of education may have failed to elevate the publio taste as far as picture plays are concerned, and yet may have had an elevating tendency in other directions; but in controversy he has developed the objectionable habit of giving an opponent's sentence a turn here and a t\vi6t there to servo his own controversial purposes. Let 1110 tell Mr. Sievwright that the quotation he makes from my letter means precisely what it states, and not what lie pretends to think it "implies." Because I emphatically repudiate his distorted "impression," ho remarks that I must have a greater gift in subtlety than clearness of expression. He certainly has (i greater gift in misrepresenting an opponent than in fair or intelligent con« troversy.

I have no intention of prolonging it futile discussion as to whether we are better than our forefathers; but I must say that there is something positively repulsive in-Mr. Sievwriglit's pharasaical declaration that "we have nothing to fear from Him who sits in judgment if those after His own heart escape." It is cant of the worst kind.—l am, etc., 1 N. E. BURTON. Auckland, July 24.