LOYALTY IMPUGNED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 29, 3 August 1925, Page 5

LOYALTY IMPUGNED

CERTAIN OFFICERS OF P. AND

T. DEPARTMENT

MR. H. E. COMBS'S COMMENT.

"In the 192/f Departmental report appeared a most unfortunate paragraph which impugned the loyalty of certain officers (unnamed) to the Department," stated Mr. H. E. Combs, in his address at the opening of the P. and T. Conference to-day. "It was one of those vague ■unfair attacks which are so difficult to meet. If it was aimed in any way at the prominent officials of the association, I wish to Bay, from a very wide experience, that I have never known any elected official with whom I have been in contact to suggest, much less assert, that any attempt should be made to do anything that would impair the efficiency of the service the Department renders the public. If the paragraph had reference to the definite and proper stand taken by association officials in the interests of the members who elected them, then one can only deplore the standard of fair play which lay behind its insertion in a Parliamentary paper. The paragraph was. seized on by the Press (I was in one town in which the local newspaper dismissed the full re-' port in a few lines and published this paragraph word for word), and certainly gave a wrong impression of the service. The paragraph was the subject of a lengthy and animated discussion in Parliament; but as this was duly reported in the 'Katipo,' no further reference is required here."