DIVIDED OPINIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1928, Page 5

DIVIDED OPINIONS

“PUNCH” ANd"“BIG BILL.” “Big Bill” Thompson’s attacks upon the British have been responsible for a severance of “diplomatic relations” between Sir Owen Seaman, editor of London “Punch,” and Mr. William Glasgpw, jun., a Philadelphian lawyer, who is attorney for the United Mine Workers. Mr. Glasgow wrote to Sir Owen Seaman suggesting an apology for “Punch’s” cartoon, entitled “History,” depicting an American army officer pointing his finger to the cowering John Bull, and demanding: “What, if anything, did you do in the Great War?” The cartoon was published as the “.suggested design for • the frontispiece of a text-book to be used in the Chicago schools.” The attorney ‘declared that the cartoons gave a false view of the sentiment of the American army and the American people. Sir Owen Seaman, according to the correspondence published in New York, declined to apologi.se, and placed the blame upon the noisy anti-British activities of Chicago’s Mayor, who is "making your country the laughing-stock of the world.” He also blamed the “familiar boast of your countrymen that America won the war.” Mr. Glasgow’s retort was to accuse Sir Owen Seaman of engaging in the same kind Pf propaganda in Britain as Mr Thompsett in America. He disputed the right of the editor of such o publication as “Punch” to constitute himself as the judge of what will appeal to the risibilities of the world. And there the matter for the present ends (says the New York correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph.”)