MR. RUSSELL'S TELEGRAMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17032, 13 December 1918, Page 6

MR. RUSSELL'S TELEGRAMS.

It is difficult to imagine what practical purpose the Minister for Public Health expects to achieve by addressing to the Mayor of Auckland such deliberately provocative telegrams as that published to-day. The message does not reproduce the gross indiscretions of language for which his previous telegram was remarkable, but it displays the same lack of courtesy and dignity. If J the Minister has again acted " after careful consideration," it is strange that he should find it Accessary to usurp tlio functions of the district health officer, and that he should be ignorant of the action which that officer has already taken. His latest telegram is in fact an unwarrantable interference in the administration of municipal affairs, and confirms the previous conclusion that the Minister is incapable of conducting his correspondence with a due sense of his own responsibilities or of the respect duo to public officials. Public opinion, which has approved the attitude of the Mayor towards the first affront to himself and tho city, will commend the decision of the City Council to ignore tho latest telegram and to endeavour to secure a- more temperate and rational method of communication between the Town Clerk and tho Chief Health Officer. But this anomalous situation cannot continue indefinitely. Discredit has already been east on the Health Department by, the.'; Minister's,. acknowledged

negligence, and the Department and the public will continue to. suffer while he has opportunity to commit new errors in administration or correspondence. The distribution of portfolios, necessitated by the departure of Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward, offered a convenient occasion for Mr. Russell to retire from the Department in which he finds his peculiar talents so little appreciated, Since that has been allowed to pass, and tho Minister persists in and renews his .original offence, it must be presumed that the public will have to wait as patiently as possible until he is betrayed into some groater folly and a less graceful surrender of the portfolio.