FREEDOM OF SPEECH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 38, 15 March 1940, Page 10

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The Editor, "The Listener" Sir,-I cannot agree with the opinion expressed in your editorial of to-day’s date that "Freedom of speech is not precious in itself,’ and I am sure that few others who pause to consider the implications of your remark will agree either. If we are to continue as a democracy, and I trust that not even war will cause us to abandon what our race has striven for so long to gain, then freedom of speech (subject, of course, to the moral curb of the obscenity laws and the social restraint of the libel laws) should be permitted. If we have not freedom of speech then it is impossible for the individual to find constitutional methods for the spread of his views if such views are unacceptable to the government. Democracy in short is freedom of speech. Under any other system, the minority is driven to direct action. Under democratic government, the rights of minorities are as important as the rights or wishes of the majority, and the most important right which the individual in British countries possesses is the right to express his own opinions and through the power of moral suasion influence the opinion of his fellows. I submit, therefore, that no one fully seized with the position could say that freedom of speech is of secondary importance. Freedom of speech, like justice and humanity, is a primary liberty, from which the majority of our other liberties derive. I am, etc.,

Auckland,

AUDAX

March 1, 1940. (Nowhere in our article did we say that "freedom of speech is of-secondary importance.’’ We said on the contrary that it is "precious," and pointed out that it should be curtailed only when it destroys other freedoms instead of preserving them.-Ed.)