POSTERS ASSAILED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 864, 7 January 1930, Page 1

POSTERS ASSAILED

“FETID GARBAGE AND A MENACE” CANON JAMES’S CRITICISM Special to THE SUN WELLINGTON, Monday. “Nasty and suggestive” was the description applied to certain mo-tion-picture advertisement posters by Canon Percival James, in a sermon last evening at St. Paul’s Pro-Cathedra I. Canon James strongly condemned many of the posters displayed in public places. It was, he said, a consideration of the question : Was a child safe from the infection lurking in picture theatres and in novels? “These posters are an abomination against which no parent can protect the child,” he declared. .“In other circumstances, the careful guardian can protect the child. The mass of, decent people in New Zealand has, for a long time, observed this disgrace, this moral menace, in our cities and our towns with shame and’consternation. Representations and objections have been made individually and by deputations, but the posters have gone steadily from bad to worse.” The speaker declared it was impossible to suppose that the posters were submitted' to any censorship. It was stated commonly the posters were frequently more suggestively salacious than the films themselves. The posters smudged with coarse fingers the sacred things of love, sex and matrimony. If the innocence of childhood were to be made aware of such questions through picture posters, the community was indeed allowing the well to be poisoned. “SHRIEKING BEASTLINESS” Tie had in mind two corners in Wellington. Hundreds of children passed them. It was impossible for the children to see the posters at these corners, Canon James said, without the gravest danger of having their minds polluted by the beastliness shrieking from the hoardings. •'Right outside school gates we deliberately expose our New Zealand children to this moral leprosy which has crept in from California,” continued Canon James. “1 say deliberately,' for while the law compels every parent to send his child to school, the law also protects these pestilential posters. r. “Clean-minded men, whatever the natural impulse, cannot interfere with these posters any more than with other property in public places. To whorp may we appeal? To the Government? To our civic authorities? To our local members of Parliament? I am confident that when the indignation of the people' of New Zealand is aroused, this abomination will be tolerated no longer. Let everyone in Wellington say: ‘Our city must be cleared of this fetid garbage.’ ” Canon James mentioned that few grudged the cost of teaching children what was right, but at the same time the children were being exposed to a danger.