A MATTER OF OPINION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16479, 19 February 1914, Page 6

A MATTER OF OPINION.

The good people of Dunedin if they take any interest at all in newspaper controversies, must be sorely perplexed to know what the difference of the "Otago Daily Times" with ourselves "is all about. We are sorry that we cannot enlighten them. A week or two ago we ventured to point out that the Reformers' stock story that the Liberal Government spent more money in its last year of office than the Reform Government spent in its first year was only half the truth. ~We , explained that the cost of the census and the general election and the additional expenditure upon defence more than accounted for the "extravagance" attributed to Sir Joseph Ward and turned the scale against Mr Massey. Then our contemporary charged us with "shuffling," "dishonesty," "perversion" and many minor improprieties and overcome by one breathless sentence of thirty or forty lines in its indictment we were compelled to confess we did not understand what it meant. Then it returned to the charge, without any explanation of that breathless sentence or of anything else, and now it says we are "indignant at having been found out." This seems to us a little childish. We have not the least objection to being found out. But we do want to find out —to find out what is troubling our contemporary. If it thinks the items we mentioned should not be excluded from a comparison between the expenditure of the two years of course it is entitled to its opinion. We think differently and 6urely we are entitled to our opinion. When Mr Massey has paid the cost of a census ~nd a general election and brought the defence vote up to a million a year he probably will claim that these facts must be taken ipto account in criticising his departmental expenditure, and we shall agree with him. But our contemporary, it aeems, will accuse him of gross extravagance and again Will charge us with "shuffling," "dishonesty" and the rest. This is a hard world for the consistent journalist!