VOLUNTARY DISCIPLINE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 209, 4 August 1937, Page 2

VOLUNTARY DISCIPLINE.

PRESERVATION OF LIBERTY. SPEECH BY HON. W. E. BARNARD Per Press Association. NAPIER, Aug. 3. “If we are to retain our democratic right of liberty in New Zealand, all sections of the people must be prepared to impose voluntary discipline upon , themselves—and that applies equally to farmer, wage-earner and business man alike,” observed the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. W. FI Barnard, in addressing electors in Napier this evening. Sir Barnard said that under dictatorships people were under subjection, and no upheaval or breakaway seemed possible. Under democracy the position was different. Discipline was not imposed from above, but must be developed from within the individual and voluntarily accepted. It that discipline broke down, say through large-scale lock-outs by employers or wholesale strikes by workers in defiance of the law as it stood, democracy was at once endangered and might even fail altogether. “We must set our faces _ against theories of class war. Opposing factions must remember that while there is room for difference of opinion—’political, economic and religious—we must be prepared to concede to other sections of the people than our own particular one the right to share fully and freely in the social, economic and cultural wealth of the country,” Mr Barnard said.