5 JUNE 1976, Page 18

Liberty Sir: As the erosion of our traditional libel' tics

goes steadily on almost imperceptiblY we would do well to ponder the following words of Charles Morgan in 1948:

'A man's liberty is that area of his life which his individuality moves freelY. "

finite, unless we speak mystically 015 union with the infinite. In all other sense' political or personal, objective or subjective' his liberty is restricted, is defined and se: cured by its restrictions, and is not to 1" thought of except in terms of them. As a room is not a room that has no walls, sn liberty is not liberty that has no boundaries. It is an area, not space. Its value, like a room's, does not dePen on its size only. It depends on its interior beauty, its proportion, its light and warrnt.h.15 its outlook, the use that is made of it; cin quiet sometimes, and sometimes on ti:s company received there; always on a 11'04 knowledge that it is his, and that, wbell,,,ue goes out, it will await his coming back. 1"i room has this special quality: that it his residence only, but his home. Drivell from it, surrender it to the habitation °a alien spirits, and he is a homeless one. c wanderer in the desert of existence, wi, the shapes of loneliness pursue him by Claie and by night, and his breath is fear. OA room is his home, where love nourishedat; experience taught him, where he is cal:tab f of innocence and renewal; it is the origin (3.

'

his courage to issue out, the hope of his 75 turn and his redemption. This room for its glory to three things; his vision anr, its ghosts; his sense of peace in it; his ass1.1.,, ance that it is not a prison. It is a liberty wo dwell in terror of being invaded. II is.114 liberty to ring for a banquet if it be a jalw

who carries in the tray. bY

But it is liberty to know oneself; an If; transcendence of knowledge to be onescif.; and by penetration of being to lose one° and, in losing, find.' These words read as movingly in 1976,talse they sounded when I heard him give. Zaharoff Lecture in 1948 at Oxford Urliv'gi sity and if they were apposite then b° much more so are they today.

Robin A. Howard 1 Temple Gardens, Middle TernPle Lane, London EC4