AN M.P.’S LITERARY EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 50, 22 November 1928, Page 6

AN M.P.’S LITERARY EFFORT

PLAGIARISM ALLEGED NELSON’S ELECTION JOKE Dominion Special Service. Nelson, November 20. The joke of the general election in Nelson is the exposure of Mr. H. Atmore, M.P., in his pose as a literary critic of no less a person than Shakespeare. As Mr. Atmore has been freely mentioned locally as the next Minister of Education the incident has particular interest. The whole town is laughing at the denouement. In the local newspaper of April 23 of this year appeared an article headed: “Shakespeare’s Day, April 23: The World’s Greatest Genius by Harry Atmore).” The article ran into almost two columns, and to many people it placed the member for Nelson in an altogether new light. He received congratulations from leading citizens on his contribution, which was looked upon as particularly tine prose. So it was, but, unfortunately for Mr. Atmore, it was not his own. Indeed it was a copy almost verbatim taken from "Lectures and Essays,” by Colonel Ingersoll (first series), published by Watts and Co., London On the eve of the election a correspondent wrote to the local paper pointin"’ out this fact, adding that out ot 440 lines only 22 were attributable to Mr. Atmore, ‘ and in no sense has the inclusion of these lines improved the original. The article was further stated to be “an impudent piece of plagiarism.” At his final meeting in the Theatre Roval Mr. Atmore made light of the matter stating that it was not a very serious offence, although he had been accused of trving to get the honour of writing an article on Shakespeare. He thought that ‘‘everyone who was educated would have known who bad written it. It was true that he had compiled it. hut merely for the pleasure of reading Shakespeare again, and he had tried to put it in the best form for the pleasure of t^Mr e °Atmore’s reference to “educated people” drew forth correspondence, in the course of which it was stated that there were not three people in Nelson who did not think that the article was composed, not compiled, by Mr. Therefore there were not three people, in the estimation of Mr. Atmore, who “have the slightest idea of what educaMr m Atmore returned to the question on Wednesday night when thajikin. he electors for returning him. His explir>« t on on this occasion was slightly different from that of his previous statement Sneaking with considerable heat, he said that no one who had the slightest idea of what education meant would have though that he was use the work of another man. He did not have the book he was said to have nnoted from when he wrote the nrtic . I7e had read the hook years previously and he was astonished when he was afc„=«d of having used pass-ces from it without acknowledgment. He had thiee commentaries b"fore him when he wiote the article, and he used rnnte-ml from th»m. together with comments of his own. To have remembered such n long article after a lense of years almost word for word would make a student of any memory training system green with envy. The controversy has not yet subsided.