A SICK WORLD
Sir,-"Government is the thing. Law is the thing." (New Yorker in your issue of August 2.) The principle that all men are equal before the law is a fundamental of modern democracy. Political rights are supposed to be guaranteed irrespective of class, economic or social position. Subject, and subjugated races-black, brown and white-do they to-day enjoy equality before any common international law? Do they’ take an active part in framing a body of international law under which they must live? Do we believe that a body of universally applicable law can be evolved before which all human beings will be equal in the way that all New Zealanders are equal before New Zealand law? If so, it is time sémebody nailed the flag of this objective to the mast and we began the compilation of such law. Freedom in ordered society is limited in that it must be interpreted in moral
terms; thought of as imposing responsibilities. Political freedom and equality finally depend upon the moral integrity of persons. Can we hope to cure a sick world when the would-be doctor nations, the civilised people, appear to be morally diseased? In these communities responsible citizens conspire to defy government and defeat law-black marketing, for instance, or New Zealand examples -after-hours liquor trading, "under the table payments" for property, and so on. When our education systems have succeeded in turning out people who would no more dream of breaking, or conniving
at the evasion of any law than they would of committing a brutal assault on a defenceless child, there will have been created the moral atmosphere necessary for wholesome international relations.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19460823.2.14.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 374, 23 August 1946, Page 5
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278A SICK WORLD New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 374, 23 August 1946, Page 5
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