THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1114, 29 April 1911, Page 4

THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT.

Our readers, we are sure, will bo interested to learn that the advertisement from the Defence Department which appears in another column is not on this occasion published at our own cost. A week or two ago we drew the attention of the public to the fact that the Government wen attempting to compel the Defence Department to continue the boycott of The Dominion in the matter of advertisements relating to the introduction of the new scheme of compulsory military service. We need not repeat here the facts we then stated, nor relate again the exposure we made of the dishonesty of the pretence put forward that the Government was boycotting the paper on the score of economy, and not on political grounds. The point we wish to emphasise is that we directed th; attention of the Commandant of the Forces, General Godley, to the fact that the official announcements necessary to the proper understanding of tlie obligations imposed under the new scheme of defence, and the announcements csscn' tial to the Mir:cssful introduction and smooth working of the now system, were being refused' to The Dominion—and to its readers—under the boycott established by the Waiu) Government. We asked the Commandant of the Forces if he was going to permit political influence— of which this was the first attempt since his advent—to creep into and undermine the Defence Department of the country, as it had crept into and demoralised practically every other Department of the State. The reply we are pleased to direct attention to in the form of the advertisement which appears in another column. General Godley, it would seem, is determined to keep the Defence Department free from political influence. It is what Lor.D Kitchener in his report insisted was imperatively necessary; it is carrying out tho wishes of Parliament and the country. It was inevitable^

that an advertising boycott so flagrantly opposed (o the public interest could not continue once political party considerations were eliminated and the question treated on its merits as-a business proposition. I But the issue was really something ' more even than that, for the boycott was an attempt to rob citizens of their liberty to choose their own newspapers by compelling them to go to certain journals; which found I favour of Ministers, for all public announcements. Our readers know how we have fought that phr.se of the boycott by publishing the a:l----vcrtiscrvunls at our own cost. Whether or not the advertisement which we publish to-day means the end of the boycott •we do not pretend to know. We arc more concerned, however, for the moment with the pleasing fact that under the new regime the Defence Department has shown itself superior to political influences and strong cnougn to demand that the success of the administration of the new system of compulsory military training shall not be imperilled to gratify the likes or dislikes of party politicians.