The Eternal Question: What's The Winner ?

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

The Eternal Question: What's The Winner ?

lIIIIItIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIHIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIMII Yet it was for the poorer classes they catered, and those whose opportunities are restricted so far as shopping is concerned. There is no law to bar a punt on the stock exchange on any wild cat scheme, but the law swoops down on those who bet with bookies, run a lottery, or send money out of the country for a ticket in Tatts, if its minions can detect the crime. There have even been prosecutions for organizing euchre drives and for a private sweepstake. Such appalling narrow-mindedness cannot be reproductive, surely? In the face of all these restrictions on individual liberty it is fortunately not yet a crime for a car owner to fill his tank with petrol on the Sabbath that he may go on a pleasure jaunt. Most of these irritating restrictions on the liberty of those who have not the ultraThyper-super puritanical outlook are bVoken every day of the week, or on Sunday, as the case may be. And the State collects a tidy revenue from the offenders — one reason at least for. their retention, our law-givers would glibly say. But it is when it comes to selfimportant, tiny-minded local bodies that some of these restrictions on individual freedom ensnare the younger generation, and make them kick as far as possible in the opposite direction. They do not believe in the measures j taken for their spiritual welfare, and, arrayed like' a line of bayonets before them, and having no intention of conforming to them, they seek every possible way to contravene them. The old story of the little boy who was told curtly, but explicitly, not to smoke. Of course, he did — on the quiet. Social busy-bodies, sticky-beaks and meddlers berit upon "uplift" per medium of doleful, impracticable ceremonials, and mournful creeds make their voices in lamentation heard in the matter of Sunday concerts. Some of

Soprocles to Frederick the Great. Even in the department that the Puritan has sought to claim as his own — that of law-making — he has done only second and third-rate work. The only really valuable contributions to law that have been made in two thousand years — e.g., Magna Charta, the American Constitution, the Code Napoleon, and Bismarck's so-called social legislation — have been the work of non-. Puritans."

"In the United States, with Puritans in complete control of most of the law-making bodies, the legislation of the past half-century has been marked by progressive decay in intelligence and effectiveness."

"In the Anglo-Saxon countries, at least, he has been in control of the law-making machinery for nearly three hundred years past, and during that time he has contrived to make crimes of most of the acts agreeable to jthe other fellow, while carefully allowing full legality to many of the acts most agreeable to himself."

Possibly he hits the nail still harder when he says:

"The true Puritan undoubtedly believes that his rigorous rules for the conduct of the non-Puritan are altruistic I—that1 — that he seeks the other fellow's advantage against the latter's will. This is the excuse commonly offered for prohibition, vice-crusading, the laws against horse-racing, and so on. The pretension, of course, is false, even when made honestly. The Puritan would not actually like it if the other fellow were saved either here or in some theoretical hereafter. His joy in his own particular virtue indeed lies precisely in the feeling that it gives him an advantage — that he, in return for his sacrifices of joy in this life, will be rewarded with illimitable joy in some future existence, whereas the other fellow will so to hell. Take away

over it by a brutalizing hand — or sneak into the nearest cover. Writers on social economics have said that a people suppressed with an excess of laws which were broken by them daily, would be prone to lose their finer sense of morality, and it is 1 not an exaggeration to say that that is what is taking place in this Dominion. _, Not only that, but it is apt to make hypocrites of New Zealanders on a large scale.

There are those who set up a wail about dancing, sport, betting, movies and posters, youthful depravity, short frocks, extravagance, inordinate love of luxury and adornment.

In fact, they "pick on" a score of minor weaknesses and frailties, but do we ever hear of them tackling the real roots of the problems?

When do we hear of grafters in high places being denounced for shady practices? Is there none of it done or

How often, from his high or selfappointed office, spiritual or temporal, does he denounce and call down wrath upon philandering politicians,/ . rackrenters, or some known evils?

Only in the people themselves, can the solution be found, and the remedy for their bondage is in their hands, but if they do not bestir themselves and strike a mortal wound into the vitals of the lethargic octopus of cant and stupidity which is entwining itself around their freedom, they must inevitably become in time human kiwis. Wings to fly with they will have, none; their gift of song will be forgotten.

In a gloomy forest of laws they will run along the ground eating worms as they utter discordant screechings. v