HANDS OFF OUR FREEDOM! ARE WE TURNING IBr HUMAN KIWIS?

NZ Truth, Issue 1153, 5 January 1928, Page 6

HANDS OFF OUR FREEDOM !

ARE WE TURNING HUMAN KIWIS?

Locking Up Liberty

Can it be that the natural history of this Dominion is on the way to repeat itself in the human species ? One of the boasted emblems of New Zealand is the Kiwi, that bird which cannot sing and has no wings with which to fly. Is this symbolic or prophetic?

T EGISLATION, as understood by a lu succession of pettifogging politi-

cians has, for far too many years, shown a tendency to clip the wings of the people whose greatest vice may be said to be a supine complacency. And broadly speaking, that la the position. Whatever may be said for paid politicians It cannot be shown that they have elevated the political atmosphere, or displayed any initiative or discrimination so far as the 1 true liberty of the people is concerned. Collectively they are vacillating time-servers. But, indeed, much of the foregoing applies to a multitude of .local bodies and corporations. As for 'a miscellany of societies, boards, etc., which, in fact, mainly undermine the freedom of the majority on the pretext of social betterment, they are, in many cases, largely composed of cranks or puritans who "work in a mysterious way, their wonders to perform."

To indicate a few — and only a few — of the laws which undermine the liberty of the individual, it is contrary to law to buy fruit after eight p.m.; tobacco or cigarettes come under the same ban. The law pounces on the small shop-keeper who sells a pie or ice cream on Sunday, and permits it to be eaten off his premises. ; As for buying fruit or a sandwich to. take away that is equally sinful. The interfering- legislature has even gone so far as to curtail the hours during which a small and struggling shopkeeper may remain open when employed labor does not come into it.

these gloomers have lodged the objection that Sunday night concerts are not to be encouraged, rather suppressed, they are not of sufficiently sacred a character In spite of the fact I

that they do not take place until after church service is over. .

Could anything be more ridiculous than an item on a musical saw being prohibited because it was not a suitable instrument to play on a Sunday, though the selection was "Nearer My God to Thee?" This is, however, a fact. Yet the rendering was delightful — even spiritual.

In practically all New Zealand towns such is the "Long-heads' " power of interdiction that tennis, cricket, any game in fact, is prohibited on any public ground. Swimming baths are closed. If not all day, most of it. So far as games organized for the amusement of spectators is concerned, that is right enough, but all the restrictions placed on innocent pastimes are nothing short of imposing the intolerant will of a doleful minority on the healthy-minded, liberty-loving majority.

The beaches, or places of recreation, on any fine Sunday are a living proof that folk cannot be made "good," in the absurd sense that some persons accept the word, by legislation or by-law. Listen to what Oweja Hatteras has to say on the subject:

"The Puritan doctrine peoples hell with the greatest men of all time from Shakespeare to Beethoven, and from

hell for the other fellow and Puritanism would straightway lose most of its meaning, and what is more, most of its charm." To these same species, however, the

children are as safe to tackle as the unorganized adults, and to make them realize that one day in a week, for the sins of their forbears, they must try to be sad, their see -saws, swings, slides, maypoles, and all those erections provided for their week-day entertainment in the several parks, or reserves, are locked on Sunday. Locked with padlock and chain! Mother and father, their day off, must take the kids out for a wander along the streets for all cannot afford seaside or the municipal zoo; failing that, they have still their back streets in which to keep the Sabbath. . Toung men and women leave the city in crowds for the beaches or bush, others hang about the streets. This, or going the "round trip, 2/6" after dark in pairs, or losing themselves in the domains or handy reserves, our melancholy minority must believe is preferable to "breaking the Sabbath." Can it be wondered that thinking people are forced to admit that some, if not all alleged law-makers, theorists and would-be soul monopolists are entirely out of touch with the masses of this ago? Such compulsory Puritanism will surely never bring the people to a better appreciation of a code of ethics which is aloof and unsympathetic? It is possible to teach a dog to beg or dance, but that same dog will still bare its teeth at a whip held