THE BANEEUL "BOOBLETIN"

NZ Truth, Issue 568, 6 May 1916, Page 8

THE BANEEUL "BOOBLETIN"

MICIOUSLY MALIGNS A MIGHTY MAN'S MEMORY AND INCITES TO THE MURDER OF PATRIOTIC PUBUCISTS Did Marshall Hall want to "Shoot and Slay" John Norton? A Pernicious, Pandering, Peli-puiriuing, Phitish Print

cide, and a splendid testimonial ' would have signalised hi^.acquittal, and all right-thinking persona would have mentioned him m their prayers. The opportunity can. " never occur again. Marshall Hall is conducting the harps, and Norton is stoking a furnace, 1 and a. great gulf is fixed between the orchestra and the pit. * This Is probably one of the most grossly immoral and virulently venomous and vicious things -that have appeared m print. It is certainly not m accordance with public policy to permit of Its publication. It->is a bald and barefaced incitement to /murder. In our opinion, the publishers of so pernicious and poisonous a paragraph are amenable to the law. It Is not for the public good that murder should ever be exalted by journalists as a thing laudable, meritorious, heroic and worthy of assistance. Yet this is what THIS POLLUTING PARAGRAPH does. It exalts the coward as admirI able; the monstrous murderer who •would seek to prevent by murdercriticism of hisV Conduct . it ctdla & j "hero." This Hall fellow, concerning whom the "BoodletJn" is so sahguin- ! arily sympathetic,' was a musical "genius" who also published some prurient putative "poems," which wore very caustically and condemnatorily criticised by some of the newspapers jof \ Victoria.. Possibly, Melbourne "Truth" expressed the hope that he had not been reading any pi these pagan "poems'' to his "lady ifrlend." Perhaps it was just as .yell for Marshall Hall that he was not persuaded by his "cronies" to attempt violence — like the bibulous brave who exclaims, 'let me get at him," while he takes good care to make no effort to get away from his friends, who are gently holding him back without the least difficulty. John Norton— who had often been v THREATENED WITH DEATH - by, congenital criminals, hired assassins, and tainted tools of all sorts— was m tft© habit or carryingr a revolver or an automatic pistol, and would no doubt have pumped Marshall Hall, and some of the "silly musical cronies" also, full of load. Instead, therefore, of his having become a "national hero" Marshall Hall would have been reduced to the condition of a BLEEDING BUNDLE OF HOWLINO HUMANITY. i The "Boodletin" blithers too soon. Although John Norton lies dead, there are journalists living who will not see his memory sullied by the jackals of Journalism. Let the "Boodletin" stick to 'lts job of pandering' to the "protected" push of predatory plutocrats. This should be quite as congenial to It as maligning the memory of a robust Radical publicist — and much safer. \ ■■-"■ ■■■ "..•• ... • • '. .- : ■ : - - ■ / - • ■ .

i One of the most glaring and shockleg examples of journalistic degeneracy la the Sydney "Boodletin," Time was when this blowzy, bragging, bumptious "Boodletln" was an organ of stalwart democracy, full or virile , Radicalism, unconventional opinions, and straightforward and caustic, but just, comments upon current affairs, j political, artistic, dramatic" and literary. Now, howover, It has grown fat — jtn the head as well as m the stomach —and seldom strays more thau an inch from the beaten path pursued by Tory Democracy, plutocratic Protectionism, murderous Militarism, fantastic Flnanco, and iack-lus!tre "litr»ture." For the "Boodletln'! as \% v nas become nowadays, there are few persons who had moro^ detestation than had the late John Norton. For ! the boozy, blatant band of "Boodletin" bards, for ';. •, ":• / '-' ' ■■ j!-., .;■' .', „ ITS MAUDLIN MOUTHPIECES of Melbourne manufacturing monopolists, 'or the "Jerked 'oft" jeremiads of its jejune Journalists, for the fantastic folly of Its financial fuglemen, for the abominable asininity of its! aboriglna- I liars, the late» John* Nortou often ex I pressed his detestation m tho columns of "Truth." ■ ; r The "Boodlotin" has not only ac- j <iuired fatness of the paunch and the brain-box, but it is al?o sufl'erlnjj from tmlorgoment of the spleen and from that peculiar liver-trouble called jaundice. ■ • •'. . ■. ; .'l;'' ...... . Moreover, It Is a cowards While the • late John Norton was alive it dared not reply to tho attacks on] it that he published. Tho explanation of this failure to reply was— just J cowardice, rank cowardice. Now that ho is dead, however, it apparently thinks it safe , to . ■ . - ■ : ■■; - ji. ■ ATTACK THE DEAD LION. * Just as tho corpse of the monarch ,of the foreat, if found by a living ass, A may be safely kicked by that asa. This i» what has happened concerning' the dead lion, John Norton, arid the live aoo, the "Boodletin." While Norton lived, tho bumptious, braggiart "Bulletin" (m Its' degenerate >Boodletin" days) dared not whisper a word against tho trusty Tribune. " Now that ha Lb dead, this wretched organ 6f Tory democracy and Melbourne manufacturing monopolists musters up courage to '■'■"■.■. ' „ . — CALL HIM A "SCOUNDREL!" This Is what it says In Its lasuo of the ISU\ ult . ( Paused out, John Norton, m&n-©glng-cdltor and owner ofj "Truth" —freak, big roan, small man, phllonthropiaV scoundrel. Nobody could writo John Nortou'ji '■ — not even John Norton, tin hla time ho was one of the f ew prators 'tho N.S. Wales Assembly has known; he was a writer with a powerful'* punch; he waa a muckrake Journalist for the money that tho muek-rakn brings; h<> was an oilHor who prostituted his paper, end he was a proprietor whom . money could not buy whon the matter had made tho right appeal '■',- to his boiling mind. He was tho personification of heredity's problem, ii Tho man who wrote that is a liar, and tho men who published U are worse. Furthermore, thoy aro crayon curmudgeons of a curiously eretlaoua character. If John Norton criticised. a dead man. all kinds of crawling creatures

____ . screamed out, •'Say nothing but good of the dead!" Now that Norton is dead, however, precisely the same pack of dastardly dingoes suddenly discover that it is safe Ao yelp; and they, forthwith, yelp out, at the corpse of John Norton, "Freak! Scoundrel! Muck-raker! Money-lover! \ Prostitute!" None of these words would the banal "Boodletin" band have dared to use i to John Norton HAD HE BEEN LIVINO. The "Boodletln" squirts filth like the skunk,, upon the grave of him whom it did not daro to' assail while living. In order to disguise to some extent, if . possible, the venomousness of its . vlciousness, the' "Boodletln" • pretends that it regards the late John Norton as a many-sided character, who had good qualities as well as bad ones^— as If there were any man living who had not! We are all combinations of good and- bad: there is no man who is entirely good, the worst bad man Is not utterly bad, nor the best man quite good. We are defective composites; "heredity's problem," as thb "Boodletln" ungrammatically calls it, is not confined to any person; we aro all the subjects of Heredity. The difference is that while In some cases, Heredity procreates a boozy bard of the BLIGHTED "BOODLETIN" BRAND, or a Jejuno Journalisttlc Jeremiah of the same school, or prompts a figure? -fudging financial funambulist, or a stodglly statistical scribe to empty his productions" into that journalistic Jakes, the banal "Boodletln," Heredity also sometimes produces a vlrjle Journalist and manly man, a fierce and fearless foe of the fuglemen of the forces of Frenaled Finance, a doughty doer of deeds of derring-do for the Democracy, like John Norton, *The people prefer the latter. Heredity may produce a fool or a "genius." When it produces the "genius'r his faults can be forgiven him for the good that he does. The feeble futile fool also h&s faults— often many of them — but he has no counter-balancing merits. He In nought but A NOXIOUS NUISANCE. That .the "BoodloUn's" pretence of admitting the existence of John Norton's good qualities was only a pretence is shown . by the sinister Bluff that it published In its latest Issue, that of the 20th uIL In this, , it allows its hatred of the late John Norton to carry it so far as to express a lament that somebody did not murder aim; 1 and to Incite criminal-minded lunatics to the murder of other fearless and TRUTH-TEIXINQ JOURNALISTS. This is what it says, or permits somo contributor to soy, and' thus, legally and morally, says it Itself: — "Lou": Some years ago an excellent opportunity offered for the assassination of John Norton. He published a scurrilous libel on Marshall Hall and a lady friend, and Hall bought a little gun for the purpose of killing the pestilence. Unfortunately Hairs silly musical cronies prevented him from carrying out his idea, instead of lumlflting him to put (it Into practice Had ho done so ho undoubtedly would bavo bo- i come a national hero. No Jury would havo convicted him of anything worse than Justifiable homl-