J. MORRISON OF TOKORANGI

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 324, 28 January 1908, Page 4

J. MORRISON OF TOKORANGI

Peobajblt our readers-are very tired of Mr J. Morrison Of Tokorangi and his wonderful meeting at Halcombe, but we msut apologise for returning to him and it once more. Mr Morrison apparently can be trusted to do the wrong thing, and is evidently encouraged to do it, so in last night's Feilding Star appears a long

letter from him beginning, '' kindly allow me space in your paper to reply

to the editor of the 'Manawatu Times,' " when if he knew anything at all he would know that the place

to reply to a paper is in its own columns. However, he evidently is fearsome of his lucubration being

too widely read and so refrained frem sending it to us. In this curious effusion Mr Morrison gives a version of his conversation with our Feilding correspondent which certainly has not

the air of verisimilitude and which its subject assures us is highly imaginative. Then he tries to wriggle out of his admissions to the two representatives' of

the Dominion that the report he had been denouncing was true and alleges that this conversation "never took place." Unfortunately for him

these were wholly disinterested witnesses and the shorthand note of his remarks is ample evidence. But most quaint of all is his "dealing" with the editor of this journal. Mr Morrison says that when the editor wired him asking him to say as chairman whether or not the statements at the Halcombe meeting were made as reported, he replied "Decline to answer your questions," and, when on receiving nis letter asking us to contradict the contents—apparently the whole contents—of a particular issue of the 'Times' the editor wrote asking him to specify just which statements he desired to contradict, he telegraphed in reply

"Insert my loiter in full or I will ask Standard to publish it." Now we are not in a position to say that Mr Morrison never sent, these two telegrams, but we do say that no such telegrams were received at this office, and we challenge Mr Morrison to procure from the post-master where he alleges that he handed them in, a certificate to the effect that they were sent, and we will immediately have a departmental enquiry made as to why they were never delivered. But apart from the question of the telegrams at all the fact that Mr Morrison, even according to his own showing, refused to answer a plain question, courteously put, which, if he knew anything at all, he msut have known it was his place as chairman to answer, is sufficient to place the laird of Tokorangi. It is hardly necessary to follow his wild charges of "lying" against the editor and, his allegations that his precious letter of universal denial would not have been published had the

Feilding Star not called attention to its non-appearance is too obvious a misrepresentation in viewtof the fact that the letter was acknowledged in our columns, and its publication promised long before the Feilding Star mentioned it, and that he had a letter from the editor also agreeing to publish another communication from him. Mr Morrison only acquires any degree of importance from the fact that his brother Farmers' Union members had put him forward as a chairman and a delegate. But he is sic an awsome body!