CHILDREN AND DOGS.

Evening Star, Issue 20780, 30 April 1931, Page 3

CHILDREN AND DOGS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I was painfully surprised to read your footnote to my letter in last night’s issue. You deliberately attempted, I hope unsuccessfully, to persuade your readers to read a meaning into my remarks that they were never intended to carry. You stood high in my estimation as a public man. The use of the poisoned arrow as a weapon is unbecoming of a gentleman of your ability and attainments.—l am, etc., M. SIEVEUSTO.VE. April 30. [Wc road no meaning into Mr Silverstone’s words. What we did was to emphasise them, so that our readers could compare them with the letter to which they referred. The letter was a pathetic plea by a mother, with little else beside, to be allowed to retain her garden to keep her children off the streets, for health and moral and safety reasons. Dogs were only mentioned incidentally, the suggestion being that it was not healthy for the children to play with strange dogs, which also had no other resort, on the grass plots lining the streets. And Mr Silverstone’s reference to this letter made it the appeal of a mother “ who is afraid that unimproved rating will inllict an undue hardship on the canine peculation of Dunedin.” Wo infer from Mr Silverstone’s reply that ho did not mean his phrase to be offensive. But does this method ot summarising an argument, or .appeal, seem reasonable to Mr Silvcjstone? And our complaint against the advocacy of the O.L.R.C. on this particular issue has been that so much of it has been ns misleading and irrelevant.—Ed. E.S.]