INDECENT LITERATURE.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 235, 18 January 1915, Page 10

INDECENT LITERATURE.

Last month a decision of vital interest to all workers for So< lal Purity and Moral Education was given in toe Magistrate’s Court, Wellington. A pamphlet had been issued warning \oung men and women of the pitfalls spread for them. The police prosecuted under the Indecent Publications Act, and though the Magistrate held that the writer’s motives had been good, he fined him £ls. The Magistrate held that it was not the function of religious bodies to give moral education. Perhaps 11 is Worship thought it was the duty of parents to give this knowledge. If so, we agree with him; but the fact remains that our cities are full of wrecks of young manhood and womanhood, who struck upon roiks which their parents knew of and refused to warn them about. When parents will not perform then duty, is any religious or social worker who attempts to warn young people to be liable to prosecution and fine? We have had cases of young girls taken for “joy rides,” givch liquor, and left in the streets dazed. Why, then, should it be an offence to warn these young girls that these things arc done? “Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” There is nothing the seducer, the procurer, and all of that class dread so much as the light of publicity upon their actions. If this decision stand-, any writer exposing the white slave trader and his partners, and warning the unwary of his methods, may be harassed by police, taken to Court, and heavily fined if a Magistrate chooses to think the warning an indecent publication.