MAN IN PRISON
TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US, by Ian Hamilton; published by the author, Auckland, 21/-. HIS is an account of a conscientious objector’s experience in New Zealand during World War II. Apart from Ormond Burton’s In Prison it is the sole published record of prison life in this country within recent years, and as such has considerable value. Hamilton is an anarchist, finding the source of all evi] in "the large-scale community." One can believe with him that his "human voices" are difficult to hear in the large modern state but it is to that condition that our technology commits us, and we must make the vee of it. Curiously the author himself, despite his philosophy, is a splendid example of how men can make human voices heard "in. megapolis. At the outbreak of war Hamilton was in a neutral country. He immediately returned to New Zealand, resisted what he felt to be the tyranny of military conscription, and was accordingly imprisoned. Within the prison he continued to resist unreasonable constraints and spent lengthy periods in solitary confinement on bread and water and later on hunger-strike, as a result. In writing now he is able to give us a modest but rather fine record of what the ordinary man may achieve who keeps an ideal of human dignity before him. His is truly one of the human voices which wake us, It is not unjust to point out that the voice which is to be heard in megapolis must speak as his does from within her walls. Unlike much prison literature, Hamilton’s report has no horror appeal. PreBelsen though, it would have shocked us as it still should that men could be kept year after year on "non-association" within our own cities, for this "non-asso-ciation" is a sort of long-drawn death-
the most severe variation of solitary confinement which men can endure for any period. If the sole result of Hamilton’s book were the abolition of the solitary confinement cells, the book would have been worth writing. In any case, it is
well worth reading.
A.J.
N.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 12
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349MAN IN PRISON New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 12
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