“THE PRESS” AND THE PRIME MINISTER

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22194, 10 September 1937, Page 7

“THE PRESS” AND THE PRIME MINISTER

TO TH* KDITOft OT IB* PBIS9. Sir, Your correspondent “S.M.” asserts that I resent the fact that "The Press” has dared to criticise the Prime Minister at all. He has no grounds whatever for making any such assertion. My resentment was directed, not at “The Press's” criticism of Mr Savage, but at the manner of it. It may interest your correspondent to know that before publication of my original letter, "The Press" addressed to me the following:—“lf you will quote or give references to any of tne ‘series ox endeavours ... to impugn the honesty and integrity of the Prime Minister,’ your letter will be considered.” I immediately supplied the necessary references and quotations and my letter was then published. Apropos your correspondent’s reference to what he is pleased to term my “mental confusion,” may I suggest that his own “mental incapacity” is possibly not so extreme that he will fail to attach at least a little significance to the fact that, after requesting me to support my letter with references, “The Press” published it and made no endeavour to disprove my contentions. ... “S.M.’s” dogmatic and abusive verbosity notwithstanding, I maintain that it is unseemly for “The Press” to describe an utterance of the Prime Minister of the Dominion as “silly, ’ and that to accuse him of a “wriggle or of “shuffling”—vide sub-leader in The Press” of September 3—not only impugns his honesty and integrity but is a most undignified method of criticism and hardly in keeping with the standard which readers expect to find in the editorial columns of a paper which can claim to be “The South Island’s leading daily.” It is indeed regrettable that S.M. had so little courage of his convictions that he found it necessary to deny their authorship to your readers. As far as your correspondent’s references to the political aspects of my letter are concerned, I would suggest that it is fortunate for New Zealand that the Government does not ha\ _• to depend for recognition of its sterling efforts on the palpably antagonistic reasoning of the type of political “yesmen” of which “S.M.” is such a demonstrable example.—Yours, etc., J. J. COMERFORD. September 9, 1937.