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Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1026, 16 January 1911, Page 4

Since the Christehurch organ, of tho Ministry is still proceeding with its forlorn endeavour to show that the recent £5,000,000 loan was not such a dreadful failure as everybody else admits it to have been, it-would be, impolite of us not to notice its articles. We arc glad to say that in its article of Saturday its tone is chastened and its language more seemly than it has been for a week past. It no longer speaks of "impudence," "brazen effrontery," ■"deliberate" falsification of figures, and "the annals of journalism," and this wo must count to its credit.' Although its manners arc improved, wc cannot say tho same for its candour, but no doubt it would bp too much to expect more than one thing at a time. Uncandid our critic has evidently decided to remain, for although it is good enough to "accept" our humble plea that neither we nor the livening Post deliberately falsified tho figures, it is careful not to say that the corrected figures which we gave left unaffected the'simple facts that our 3i per cents were the

lowest on the Australasian list and lower than in any year since the black year 18D3. Nor does'it tell its readers, that it misrepresented the price of New Zealand stock in order to make this disadvantage appear less than it actually _ was. "A mistake is a mistake," it says, but we have its own example to justify the statsmonfc that this "mistake" which it seeks to hide was impudent and deliberate. We are, upon the whole, not sorry that our contemporary rushed in where its move wary friends feared to say a word, since, it has enabled us to expose the tactics which are required for the defence of the Government's financial methods. And from those tactics can be inferred the character of the case they are used to bolster up..