FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 40, 29 March 1940, Page 12

FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

To The Editor, "The Listener." . Sir -I agree that nowhere in your editorial did you say that freedom of speech was of secondary importance, but I submit that no other inference could possibly be drawn from the phraseology which you used. You said, I admit, that freedom of speech was precious, but added that it was "not precious in itself,’ and that it was a " dangerous superstition " when it destroyed other freedoms. The only possible inference which rational people can draw from such statements is that there are other liberties transcending in importance the liberty of free speech. The only other freedom you mention is freedom of thought and what possible good is freedom of thought without freedom of speech? Even the meanest private in the German (or Russian) armies enjoys freedom of thought, but what good does it do them, or us? War, as you rightly point out, is a balancing of risk against rjsk, yet we must be careful what it is that we hazard. One of the cardinal principles of

British law is that it is better that many guilty persons should escape punishment than that one innocent should be unjustly convicted. I submit, with respect, that the same principle should hold in the case of freedom of speech. I refuse to believe that the majority of those who desire to express themselves on subjects of national importance are wouldbe saboteurs or traitors. Further, where freedom of speech is abrogated, the governing authority is in the position of being the judge in its own causea state of affairs which is repugnant to the principles of common justice, as I apprehend them. I am, etc.,

AUDAX

Auckland, March 15, 1940. [The only pergiissible inference from our article was what it plainly said, viz., that free speech is precious, and not to be lightly curtailed, but that it is fanaticism to argue that in no conceivable circumstances may it be curtailed.-Ed.]