The Fatal Fight.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 191, 20 August 1901, Page 2

The Fatal Fight.

(To the Editor of the Times.) Sir, —The newspaper press is recognised as a power for good or for evil in every community. I was surprised and grieved to observe your column under the above beading in to-day’s issue. Sir, your aim should be to educate to something higher and better than to pander to the love of brutality which unhappily exists in many minds. Vfc hear far too much profanity and foul language, and can well afford to dispense with such slang accounts of how two men tried their utmost to incapacitate

and make each other, finally resulting in the loss of life. In our little district general information on topics of an improving and elevating nature aro what are needed—extracts from our colonial, or Australian, or foreign papers, dealing with subjects that tend to improve mankind, not to debase, of -which there is too much generally observable in the newspaper press. It is an old and trite saying that we borrow a tone from those wo associate with. May your tone be one calculated to beneilt yoqr readers, and give them a taste for purity, probity, and striving to leave the world all the better for having lived in it, Those are our friends who tell us our faults, not those who pat us on the back and praise our follies.—l am, etc., J. Peckovek. Gisborne, Aug. 19, 1901. [lt is strange how diverse may bo the views taken of a subject. Our idea in publishing the article was that it was an effective practical sermon against the horrible brutality of the encounter by which the young New Zealander met his death. It seemed to us that the report would convey tho moral to be taken by the youth of the colony without further comment from us. — Ed. Times.] -