FUN FOR THE MILLION. A Journalistic George Washington.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 93, 12 April 1902, Page 8

FUN FOR THE MILLION. A Journalistic George Washington.

THERE is probably breathless expectancy m this city ju&t at present to see what the waste paper baskets may bring forth. From a resolution passed at a meeting of the Wellington Peace and Humanity Society last week it appears likely that all the waste paper heaps in the city will be explored for matter for a new Peace paper shortly. This organ is to print matter (presumably dealing with war, although the Society doesn't say so) which has been rejected by the other papers and the hitherto despised screedmonger, afiected as so many in this city are, with the fell disease "scribblers' itch," will rejoice with a great gladness and gird on his inkpot and sharpen his pencil. The most delightful section of the Peace and Humanity Society's resolution is that in which it states that it will start a paper "to correct others." * * • It will be seen at once that the United Press Association, through which organisation the whole of the official war news comes to New Zealand, will be shamed into silence by a truthful organisation of which only the Peace and Humanity Society knows anything. How the local Society is to gauge the truth or otherwise of any cabled reports is extremely hard to determine. It believed the Association message about De La Rey's kind treatment of Methven for it passed another resolution admiring him. Also it believed the official statements touching the Bush Veldt murders. As a winnowing machine endeavouring to fan the chaff from the gram the Peace and Humanity Society seems to want repairing. Unless it gets its news direct from the Boer emissaries or the Continent we can't see how it will be enabled to "correct" the Press Association. * * * The average man believes official cables. So does the Peace and Humanity Society — sometimes. It finds no difficulty in seeing the truth in the Bush Veldt or De La Rey cable, and there is no need to "correct" that sort of thing. The Press of New Zealand hag exhibited a tolerance, dining the continuance of the v, ar, in keeping with its best tradi10ns. It has been \ery ready to rebuke Briton or Boer when the conduct of either demanded it, but, of course, it hasn't printed allthetommyrot submitted to it by people who want to conduct modern warfare from behind a desk with a very small-bore pen foi a weapon. It is sincerely to be hoped that all those rejected "tnnhs" have been saved up for the to-be-published peace and humanity paper so that those "mute inglorious" Kitcheners may be heard at last. * * * The combined spleen of all the rejected writers of the past two years will certainly furnish readers with something quaint journalistically. The new paper will btart under hea\ - ily handicapped conditions, however, when it presumes to "correct" the press of the colony. Also, if the Peace Society is convinced of the righteousness of its cause why didn't it nip the preliminary press " lies " in the bud by publishing the " truth " m correction m October, 1899 ? Seems irom its point of view as if the mischief was done. Seems also that there is a weary work before these apostles of " peace at any price " in refuting the lies of an alleged iniquitous everyday kind of press when those alleged "lies" extend over so long a period.