CORRESPONDENCE

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 3628, 7 November 1918, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE

Mil DAItIIAGH AND THE MAYOR

Sir, —May I ask your kind permission to clear up what apparently was a mis-statement on the part of his Worship the Mayor in referring to mo

as refusing to close my shop on Monday afternoon. I am aware that his Worship did not make use of my tin me, but his iuuondoes were such that the crowd jumped to the conclusion that I was the one referred to.

I am not aware that his Worship actually said so, but the impression is abroad that his Worship interviewed me, and that I refused to close. I beg to state that the Mayor never interviewed me, and that I never asked him whether the hotels were going to close or not.

The public are aware that my shop is closed (except for one man to answer any urgent calls) between noon and 1 p.m. I had no official notification of the capitulation of Austria until after my return from lunch, at 1.15 p.m. j when I read the announcement at the Post Office.

About 1.45 p.m. a party of gentlemen came into my shop and asked if I was going to close. I told them that I was going to do so as goon as possible—the shop was very busy at the time.

I also wish to state that my shop was closed fully half an hour before his Worship made reference to the matter in his address.

In times' such as the present it is good to see our Mayors and other public citizens such bxirning patriots, but I consider his Worship's utterances on Monday afternoon totally uncalled for, his recommendations of "boycott" and "sacking" distinctly unfair, and his indirect stab at one of the "leading prohibitionists of the town" wholly unwarranted. —I am, etc., /

JOSEPH DARRAGH