THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1910. WHAT ARE WE COMING TO?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10040, 14 July 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1910. WHAT ARE WE COMING TO?

Vc or,e reads the "3)jjns of the times" aright, one is forced to ask the question set out above. Recently there have been public agitations set gniDg for the obtaining of relief for offend- ! ers against the laws which are enact- | ed for the protection of society, and i the most glaring instance is one where a Judge of the Supreme Court has been soirrilously attacked for having done that which he knew to be his duty. The Appeal Court has upheld the decision of Mr Justice Cooper to declare Pawdka a habitual criminal, and we see that the combined wisdom of: the highest judicial bench has supported the Judge, who has had to suffer in silence, whil: t his detractors were writing and talking in 3 wild and unbecoming

manner. Then we had the campaign of a rehearing for Mr Knyvett of Auckland. It is nothing short of a degradation of politics when a number of members of a representative chamber are to be found ready and willing to "barrack" for a man who has set all military rule at defiance, and it is to be regretted that the Government of the day shows signs of yielding to the incessant shrieks of hysterical persons. Mr Knyvett took an oath when he became a citizen sol dier that he would implicitly and un- _ questioningly obey his superior officers. The same spirit of lawlessness which causes men to howl loudly for lighter punishment for delinquents has broken out in Dunedin in a wild and cowardly attack on two policemen who were doing their duty. And now we have a number, o£ medica' men demanding from Parliament the tight to still further degrade the unfortunate women and girls whom chance or cruelty have made into outcasts of society. The medical men who are demanding an active operation of the CD. Act, may have forgotten the cause which ledjto the repeal of the same measure in Britain. If they have forgotten, it may be well to remind them of the facts, and we may have to do this later on. But what we wish to say at this stage is that any law which makes the woman the one creature upon whom the horrible degradation shall fall, is one that the womanhood of this country will not tolerate, and one which every decent man in the community ought to scout.