PRICE OF FREEDOM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1942, Page 2

PRICE OF FREEDOM

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR SINCLAIRE IN CHRISTIAN ORDER CAMPAIGN TRUE AND PERVERTED IDEALS. NEED OF RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. “The price of liberty, we have been told, is eternal vigilance. But some of us are inclined to pay more attention to the vigilance than to the freedom. Rather, therefore, I should say that the price of freedom is the constant exercise of freedom —that the best way of asserting your claim to freedom is not merely to be vigilant, not merely to talk about it —as I have been doing for 20 minutes—but to act like free men and women.”—ln this way Professor F. Sinclaire, of Canterbury University College and the principal speaker at the second broadcast public meeting in the National Campaign for Christian Order, concluded his address on “Who Wants Freedom?” in the Auckland Town Hall last evening. , . If he were to call for a show of hands in answer to the question “Who Wants Freedom,” the vote would undoubtedly be unanimous, began Professor Sinclaire. But when he said we •‘wanted freedom” wo nearly all meant something different. Some wanted it for this reason; some for another; and we had different plans for getting it 1 and keeping it. Our unanimity was largely an illusion. Those who were of the speaker’s age had begun life with the comforting feeling that, on the whole, the battle for freedom had been fought and won in the 19th century, and that the face of mankind was firmly set toward the light. The new century began in hope and confidence. Yet here they were in 1942, and mankind was engaged chiefly in the work of slaughter. Freedom, in the elementary sense, was less secure than at almost any period in history. What had gone wrong?

LIFE AND DEATH MATTER.

“I don’t pretendTo answer that question with a neat and compact formula,” continued the . speaker. “I am not offering you a handy guide to the universe. But. I have one thing to say which is literally a matter of life and death. The fabric of freedom is tottering because its foundations have not been truly and securely laid; we have not dug deep enough. . . . The true and secure foundations of freedom are not laid in our personal predilections, nor in any considerations of personal pleasure, political expediency, or economics. Nor can we defend our claim to freedom by an appeal to common sense, nor even to reason. The foundations of freedom are mystical, religious, or they are nothing Yet we tended to overlook that religious basis largely because our conception of freedom had been coloured by the secularism of men like Mill, Huxley, and Bradlaugh, who were the great champions of freedom in the 19th century. Hitler, and the allegiance given to Hitler by the Germans, could only be explained by recognising the appeal which he had made to certain idealist, mystical, and religious motives—spurious, debased and perverted certainly,, but the world was not going to be' saved by lurid denunciation. “We must meet the Fascist creed, not merely with denunciation or denial, but with a creed, a belief, a way of life, as positive, as aggressive, and more truly creative. We must have a saner and truer idealism to oppose the false and distorted idealism of Hitler,” said Professor Sinclaire.

STAND BY THE CHURCH.

Where to find it? It was Einstein who had admitted that only the church in Germany had stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign to suppress the truth. And in that fact was to be found the answer to the question which he had just asked, continued the professor. In Germany, it would appear that the enemies of freedom had carried all before them — all but one fortress. The purely secular conception of freedom was powerless to defend or justify itself. “You may talk in fine phrases about the rights of man. or the dignity of thought; the exponents of the philosophy of might will make short work of such phrases. They are mere wind unless they have behind them and beneath them the intuitions, the faith and reason, of religion. Either man is a child of God with a calling and a destiny and a duty answering to that high estate, or freedom itself is a meaningless word.

“We Christians, then, believe with our fellow-Christians in Germany that we have that better and truer idealism which at once defines and safeguards freedom. We say this humbly, remembering our own weakness and unworthiness . . . but we say it confidently too, as men and women who are conscious of their trust.”

FREEDOM TO SERVE.

Freedom for the Christian was nothing so abject and futile as the supposed right to “do as one likes,” for no such right existed. It was freedom to live a full human life, in loyalty to the highest they knew —freedom to serve, to obey, to be loyal. The freest man on earth- the only free man —was the man vho had found his freedom in a satisfying allegiance. There were still two other points to be stressed, said Professor Sinclaire: “Freedom is not the whole of life . . .

Like fresh air, it is a condition of healthy living and a condition only; a means, not an end in itself; a necessary condition for the healthy and effective exercise of our powers of mind and soul. Nothing more. And let us never forget that the threat to freedom does not come solely from the enemy without’. When the menace of Hitler and Hitlerism is removed —as please God it shall be! —there remain the enemies within. You know their names as well as I do —their names are pride and lust, avarice and selfishness, envy and malice and self-righteous-ness and sloth . . . and chiefly, I should say, sheer slackness and indifference.”