OURSELVES AND THE MAYORALTY.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 394, 23 April 1908, Page 4

OURSELVES AND THE MAYORALTY.

We are accumulating souvenirs of the present election, though the majority have gone into the capacious waste paper basket. As a result of the outspoken position we have taken up in the interests of the town with which we have thrown in our lot, we have so far received one writ and a variety of anonymous communications.. Some of these we havo been able to trace, and may in good time make what use we consider judicious of the facts. Meantime we give one of the communications as a specimen. It is one of the type which we might expect from the intelligence that gave it birth, and is written on a coloured postcard depicting an individual occupying a prison cell

"P.N. electors are laughing at you. They cannot be led by such silly writings, etc., etc. You may think it is clever but no one else does who has sense. Na3h, Nash, Nash. Nash: result, through you— "Essex .... 1500 ' Haydqn .... 600 "Nash .... 450." In/this particular case certain internal evidence, including the first figure given, led to the easy tracing of the sender, but we only give the effusion as an example of the sort of tiling that certain people find appropriate to their sense of the fitness of things. Then the telephone has been used to convey offensive messages, while the nainos of our staff have been falsely given as the senders of messages elsewhere—a form of false pretence that may very easily lead the perpetrators into trouble. Apart from these anonymous effusions there are the genuine correspondence and other letters. We have had various communications in reference to matters said to ba under consideration or to be carried out in the supposed interests of a candidate, and one writer, who is endeavouring to palliate the action of the Mayor in his efforts to silence us says: "You must not blame Mr Essex too much in this matter of the writ lam one of his supporters yet I recognise that this sort of thing is folly, but it was forced upon him by members of hia ooinmittee who found, that in various quarters they were asked why the Mayor iiad threatened you with a writ and never issued one, and they considered that it was one of those desperate cases in which desperate remedies must be tried and so plunged on the course adopted and which I believe they already keenly regret having followed.''