LIBERTY IN THE NEW ORDER

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 37, 7 November 1942, Page 6

LIBERTY IN THE NEW ORDER

In an article on the subject of State regimentation after the war, contributed to the Manchester Guardian by Mr. Ivor Brown, the newly-appointed editor of- the London Observer, appeared this warning:— ' . While there are repeated rumblings from Authority to the effect that we are all going to be controlled and rationed and ordered about for years after the war, I note (he says) a vehement outcry from sundry citizens who have the liberty of print or merely a corner in a railway carriage to the effect that this shall not be so. The protestants . . feel that by the time ‘this job’ is over they will have had more thau enough of form-filling, coupon-cutting, queueing up for permits, and all the rest of the wartime routine., During the last war the State impounded a large measure of the citizen’s personal liberties as a wartime necessity. It was very reluctant to relinquish its hold when the war ended. In fact,- it nevei wholly relinquished it. Adult readers of that day and generation may recall the storm of protest that broke out in that bastion of freedom, the United Kingdom, at the tardiness shown by British Governments to relax the Defence of the Realm Regulations (popularly known as “D.0.R.A.”). MT. Ivor Brown’s cautionary comment is a sign that the experience has not been forgotten, and is also an appeal for vigilant regard for the restoration of the citizen’s personal liberties as soon as the present conflict is over. The need for this vigilance was strongly emphasized in the New* Zealand Parliament and Press when war broke out in 1939,. and vast encroachments were made upon our own liberties. It is given even greater urgency now by the activities of post-war planners busily engaged in designing blue-prints for the new world order, and by the further fact that while there may be a considerable variety in thendesigns, there is a significant unanimity on the point that the new order will call for surrender, greater or less according to this plan or that, of the citizen’s freedom and personal initiative. The danger of the situation is that in our own country there is growing up a younger generation of citizens whose idea of liberty cannot be measured by the same liberal standard as that which inspired the generation before the last war. , • ~ < With the insidious encroachments upon individual rights and privileges by the Socialist regime in the years before 1939 and greatly intensified by the war, this youngfer generation has been placed in danger of becoming habituated to forms of regimentation without becoming fully aware of their implications, or realizing the direction of the trend; without, that is to say, being conscious of what has been lost, and may be permanently lost, in the way of personal rights. There is a saying that people do not miss what they have never had. The truth of this may be exemplified in the different mental attitudes of these two generations on the subject of freedom, in a gracua transition from the sturdy defence of liberty of an earlier day to a submissive and unsuspecting acquiescence in the encroachments made upon it bv Socialistic legislation in recent years. It is also exemplified in the manner in which a voting Nazi enslaved by Hitler unthinking y becomes reconciled to his 'lot, presenting an example of complete and abject surrender of human personality and individual status.