A NATIONAL MENACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1917, Page 6

A NATIONAL MENACE.

To the Editor. Sir, —There is one tendency which the people of New Zealand will be well-ad-viseil to set their faces sternly against. I refer to the attempt which is being made to divide the country into warring factions bv the machinations of militant demoninationalists. „ These people seek to apply the axe to the tree of knowledge and to plant in its stc-ad seeds of alien growth. The pretext is that the rising generation shall by artificial and mutually antagonistic processes become more godly. But the inevitable result of the existing propaganda will be to divide the Dominion into warring factions employing political devices to ensure denominational supremacy. Each citizen who is induced to subscribe to a scheme of denominational education strikes a blow at our free, secular and compulsory system of education—a system which has done more to obliterate intolerance and widen the ideal of national unity and enlightenment than any other method that could have been devised. New Zealand was pioneered by people whose main aim was to cut adrift from the galling fetters of religious fetiehism and the persecutions incidental thereto. One of tne first enactments of the Legislative served to dissociate the State from denominationalism, and to thereby secure for the unit unfettered liberty of conscience. The result was admirable. In no country in the world has citizenship achieved a higher level. This is in no small respect attributable to the fact that although denominationalism has been banished from the schools, a high moral and civic standard has invariably obtained there. The result invariably has been to elevate and inspire, and not degrade. There have always, of course, been disruptive influences behind the scenes, and it is when these have intruded into politics or into the schools that we 'have seen the first fruits of sectarian bitterness and national disintegration. That is why I "most earnestly plead* with those who have the intelligence to rise above intrigue and petty faction to put first things first and use their utmost influence to preserve to the people of this country the inestimable boon of freedom to think, to vote, to work aiffi to worship.—l am, etc., PIERCE C. FREETH. Palmerston North, Dec. 19.