The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16. "HUSH!"

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 46, 16 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16. "HUSH!"

We in New Zealand pride ourselves without reason on our immunity from the faults that affect humanity elsewhere. We rather scorn the other fellow. If the other fellow were shown a published fist of the sexual cases heard in the Supreme Court of New Zealand in any year he would scorn us, and with the best of reasons. With the exception of Australia, no country has so many cases in proportion to the population. It is t.O be remembered that New Zealand is a particularly small country with an exceedingly sparse population—a country where the virtues have space to flourish. At every session of the Supreme Court our judges regret the extraordinary percentage of sexual crimes in the calendar. It is to be remembered that these, sexual criminals—infinitely more dangerous to society than any other class of misdeamant —are all sent to gaol for terms. Thus, every session there are a number, of these human beasts withdrawn. The point for the people of New Zealand is that every session brings forth fresh cases, and every year releases a number of sexual maniacs who are infinitely more prone to commit their special crime on release than they were when they went to gaol. Any honest judge will admit this without demur. We have therefore to come to the grave conclusion that New Zealand is abnormally infested with sexual maniacs, that their punishment is purely farcical, and that when it is finished they are still sexual maniacs. New Zealanders in the bulk would, if asked, vote for a clean country. At present the sexual maniac is treated little worse than the fool who sells indecent postcards—but he ought to be if decent New Zealanders are to be protected. It is monstrous that parents in New Zealand should be afraid to permit their little children to go abroad because of these unrestrained fiends, and extraordinary that thfo is absolutely the only country in the world where the people themselves have not taken a hand in the punishment of these unnatural men. In the future, when the extraordinarily blunted sense of the New Zealand public sharpens up, the people will demnnd the only reparation that is adequate. If the sworn testimony of the whole of the medical fraternity of New Zealand could he set down and published to the public, the horror of tlie story would create a civil war. But in every centre and in every lesser town the whole community says—"Hush!"