WHY DON'T WE SPEAK?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 280, 3 November 1944, Page 5

WHY DON'T WE SPEAK?

Sir,-The reasons offered in your leading article of October 13, "Why Don’t We Speak?" as justification for your silence about the recent happenings in Warsaw are apt to create grave concern in the minds of at least some of your readers, Your main argument seems to impute that the deliberate use of halftruths and misleading reports by all belligerent Governments makes, generally speaking, the ascertaining of facts a difficult proposition. So it does. However, ignoring a case like that of Warsaw, which is, to use a rather hackneyed term, a real test case concerning the conscience not only of all belligerents but of all humanity, on grounds that it is difficult to assess the facts, seems hard to reconcile with a responsible journalist’s standing. In every dispute, political and nonpolitical, there is a divergence of testimonials and arguments. Yet it is the duty of a judge to pronounce a verdict in a legal case, doubtful as it may be; and so could an opinion on happenings that stir so deeply the conscience of its readers not be expected from a paper of as good a standing as yours? Similarly, to defer judgment to A.D. 1950, in a case involving the fate of thousands of men and women who are dying now, is truly a strange attitude to take — strange, and yet somewhat familiar. It is reminiscent of a judgment framed many years ago: the judge was Pontius Pilate. ,

L.

HARTMAN

(Wellington).

(They are not judges, but fanatics or frauds who pronounce verdicts before the facts have been established.-Ed.).