AN EXTRAORDINARY MISTAKE

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 50, 28 February 1923, Page 9

AN EXTRAORDINARY MISTAKE

The Governor of New South Wales (Sir Walter Davidson) was recently the innocent object of much adverse criticism in liobart owing to a curious mixture of two Press reports in cable transmission from Sydney.

Into the ever tactful, pleasant, and circumspect mouth of His Excellency, who hud addressed some appropriate remarks at the Anniversary Regatta

luncheon, were placed the burning strictures of a fervent clergyman who on the same day addressed a Protestant demonstration. So the people of Hobart were astonished to read that His Excellency had warmly commended a proposal to form a Protestant Party in the State Parliament, and had urged Protestants to make a determined effort to control executive positions in the Labour movement. The Irish people, His Excellency was made to declare, had just as much liberty as they had in Australia, but would not be guided by reason, and in emphatic words he was made to spur his hearers to be on their guard against the "small but clamant minority which was both openly and surreptitiously working for the dethronement of the King." Naturally enough, His Excellency was mystified to find amongst his correspondence one morning a remonstrance from Father O'Donnell, of Tasmania—whose patriotic services during the war are gratefully remembered—followed by others in less dignified terms, and eventually a copy of the Hobart paper in which the garbled report had appeared was procured, and the extraordinary error war detected.