ORGANISATION AND LIBERTY.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 February 1928, Page 4

ORGANISATION AND LIBERTY.

Since the more general enfranchisement of women, the question of individual liberty as against social good lias become of increasing importance. An added complication to the contest has been all the infringements of the liberty of tlio subject, which have come upon a partially democratised world as a result of the war. Much of Europe at present is governed by various forms of dictatorships, as, for instance, in Russia, Turkey, Italy, and Spain. In England we are still teased with tho last- remnants of D.O.R.A. At the time these lines are being written it is still illegal to sell or to buy a chocolate after 8 o’clock in a theatre (whilst the far deeper crime of making chocolates with hard centres still escapes the meshes of the law). Our betting laws are one long tangle of inconsistencies, and work out to a large extent as class discrimination. A most important law restrictive of liberty has just found its wav to our national Statute Book, the Report of Judicial Proceedings Act. The whole nation is separated by yet another class line, which divides oft those included under the National Health Insurance Ads from those who are socially above such a scheme ; and a vast mass ol social legislation, which may produce a large amount of material good, 'orders the fives of the poorer classes in this country. Whatever the tangible products of this regimentation of people, it all travels on an opposite road I roll) the liberty of the individual subject to govern his own life as il scorns proper and wise to him.—Helena Nornianton in •“ Good Housekeeping.'”