ANONYMOUS CORRESPONDENTS.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20835, 20 April 1933, Page 7

ANONYMOUS CORRESPONDENTS.

TO THE EDITOR OP TUB FKE3S. Sir, —I am amazed, in reading the correspondence and your comment thereon, relative to anonymous letters to the press, to find that we are asked to takp the Letters of Juniors, not only as a mould of literary form but as a standard of ethics. In the public discussion of purely abstract questions of an impersonal nature I hold that anonymity has its proper use. In attacking or criticising any individual in the press, a decent correspondent, must sign his .name. If he cannot do so for fear of consequences, let him refrain from writing personally, or from writing at all. There is no other way. Why should a correspondent have the advantage of a protection which is withheld irom his adversary? Some of your correspondents argue that a public man is less deserving of consideration than a private, individual. I cannot see why. I am not a public man; but my observation leads me to believe that in a controversy public men are as often right as their critics. So why favour one party by allowing him to attack, from an entrenched position, an adversary who stands in the open? I have known disgraceful instances in this city of personal attacks on an individual citizen by a pack of anonymous wolves. For the regulation of my own conduct in press correspondence I go further. If I find it necessary even to mention another person's name in a letter to the press, without criticism, even in praise, I hold myself bound to disclose my name publicly. I have no right to place anybody else in the publicity of the spotlight without having the courage to stand there myself. This is fair and just, and I know that people who are fair and just will agree with me. Let others weave what finespun sophistries they like, an anonymous writer indulging in personal attack is a sneak, in the eyes of all those who are for fair-play and justice.— i Yours, etc.. J OHN GUTHRIE. April 29, 1933. j TO THE EDITOB, OF THE rP.ESS. Sir,—Anonymous newspaper letters, on impersonal subjects, or on mattters not implicating another by name, may be allowed. Anonymity is indeed a fully-recognised foible of decent controversy. It may be also allowed to a letter wherein, though a person be publicly named, he is noticed with appreciation or gratitude, a graceful but rare address, as the benevolent are rarely explicit. But in visible informers, and nagging nameless objectors whose voices and howls may be heard from the depths of their burrows, crying out upon public persons, cannot, as you otherwise claim in >•9111- leader, represent a section of public opinion; but rather they represent the retchings of private malice -and the bashful misgivings of local manners. Public opinion was never slyly expressed; and I am surprised you defend this kind of contributor, useful though he may be in municipal contests. It is true, as you say, that the editor has always the felicity of knowing by whom these wretched contributions are written, and may guarantee to the public that they are the work of interested persons who do somewhere exist. But while, for my part, I thank you for the assurance, I would point out that anonymous personal attacks invariably carry their own guarantee, of a less• flattering kind. That' more useful guarantee which your complicity gives to their authors, that they shall neither be whipped nor exposed, is of much more weight.—Yours, etc., W. d'A. CRESS WELL, , April W, 1933.