ANOTHER BRIGHT PRINT.

NZ Truth, Issue 66, 22 September 1906, Page 4

ANOTHER BRIGHT PRINT.

"The West Coast Standard," published at Greymo'ith, is the latest addition to New Zealand journalism, and common charity and that fellow feeling which "makes us wondrous kind" dictates the wish that the little craft launched on such turbulent waters will make headway and not spring a leak or put back into port dismasted and dismantled. Newspapers, like individuals, have missions m life and the "Standard's" mission is nobly expressed m the motto : . ' • "For the cause that needs assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future m the distance, And the good that we can do." (which,by the way, is a misquotation.) No doubt m its endeavor to assist the cause, to resist the wrong, to dip into the future far as human eye can see, and to do the good it can, this little inky Niagara of the West Coast, m its initial issue, m its first setting out to reform and remodel the world, let itself fly thus : The President of the Ministers' Association (Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt) has recently exposed an ah-use. He got on the tracks of a small shop-keeper wh 0 was flagrantly defying the law by selling sweets to the Sunday School children for their missionary money on Sunday afternoons. This practice would soon undermine 'the characters of the children, encouraging them m lawlessness, and fostering a spirit of deceit and dishonesty.. The por lice are keeping a vigilant eye on the offender and. on others likely to infringe the law m similar fashion. "Truth" is not hypocritical when it advocates Sunday as a day oil rest from the toils and troubles of the jwearying week; and it has had its | word to say on the puritanical Pratt's persecution of this sinful Sabbath desecrator at Greymouth ; aiid it only repeats what it has said before that Pratt's deserts ought to be given him with a horse-whip. It is only ia be expected of a parson of Pratt's mental calibre that he would persecute a widow, struggling bitterly to feed and clothe her big brood. Such spirited actions are common to parsons, who know no mercy, show none and therefore teach , none. It is quite another thing, however, to find a new paper which adopts such noble sentiments as its motto, upholding and applauding such an action and- expressing the wish that such persecutions should be fostered and urging the police to keep a vigilant eye on offenders, who take from children m barter for sweets the pence that are intended for the propagation of the "Word" among the bushmen of South Africa and the cannibals of tlie South Seas. The Gospel of Christ must indeed be a waning cause when it needs the assistance and even the resistance of the pragmatical Pratt and the "West Coast Standard." Still the reflection cannot be avoided— if such is the poilicy to be pursued by the "Standard" '—that its life will be a very brief one. lln other ways it looks a brigi-if-print;

the paper is white, the ink is black and the type clear, and it is not badly written, with the exception of frequent grammatical errors, as will be noticed m thc above paragraph. This may be damning with faint praise, and, to be candid, that is the object of these few remarks. "Standard." Standard of what? Of a cause such as the malignant, widowworrying wowser Pratt's m his vile persecution of a struggling woman and her helpless bairns. If the "Standard" thanks it is going to live by pandering to the Pratts of Greymouth it is most egregiously mistaken.