"GLORIOUS LIBERTY IS NOT LICENCE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 105, 25 July 1927, Page 14

"GLORIOUS LIBERTY IS NOT LICENCE”

ARCHBISHOP IN DEFENCE OF MODERN GIRL “The young woman of to-day is as good as her predecessor of more conventional times. I have no sympathy with the wholesale condemnation of present-day conditions.” Archbishop Averill expressed this opinion in his service in St. Matthew’s Church last evening on the occasion of the Girls’ Friendly Society’s festival. A remarkable freedom had come to the young people in these days, said the Archbishop, but he could not sympathise with those who were revolted by the change in the conventions. In these periods of transition, dangerous as they were, people had to be guided into right channels. Better to do that than regard their tendencies as ruthless and dangerous. The maturer folk found it difficult to l?e fair in their criticism of the altered state of things. There was an exception to the generality of reasonable young women in those who delighted to shock the conventional folk. But they were actuated by bravado rather than by their real tastes. In many cases characterised by a lack of moral self-control one was prompted to regret that society was the loser by the fact that rare qualities had gone to less worthy objects. Liberty was so often confused with license. The only real liberty was the freedom to do what one ought to do. Women had come at last into a glorious liberty and it was her part to prove to all that her social freedom was not a cloak for wickedness, but a great incentive to living a fuller and more unselfish life. “One of the greatest needs of the day,” concluded the Archbishop, “is the consecration of freedom to show that this liberty does not mean pleasing ourselves irrespective of the principles and prejudices of others.”