PROLIX POLITICAL SPEECHES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1939, Page 8

PROLIX POLITICAL SPEECHES

POWER OF SELF-EXPRESSION. Contemporary criticism of the usefulness of free speech in the modern world gives a more than parochial interest to the discussion raised by Captain Victor A. Cazalet in the House of Commons on the means of increasing the number of speakers in important debates, says “The Times.” As I the Speaker pointed out —in a speech which all members, and candidates, too, would be well advised to ponder —the House has no convenient procedure for curtailing a tedious or prolix speaker ahd must therefore rely on the modesty and good sense of ' the individual. The difficulty is certainly more acute today than in the pash partly because Parliament has become a shade too gentlemanly. This is made clear by turning back to the Hansards of that ruder age of the nineteenth century, when members made it very obvious that they were bored, and | even noblemen were known to cough down a long-winded Royal duke. To a certain extent the Speaker can exercise an official sanction by not calling on those who, having previously asked for ten minutes, take thirty. But the remedy for what, as Captain Cazalet said, is "really a denial of free speech and a negation of Parliamentary government," lies with the member himself. The power of self-expression in a few words is in private life the most infallible hall-mark of intelligence: it is no different in public life.