A FOUL STROKE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12243, 6 January 1902, Page 6

A FOUL STROKE.

I TO THE HDITOII. Sin,—-The person who wrote a Passing Note on me on Saturday did a vile thing. To try to score a point against me he i dragged in tho names of two gallant Otago t lads who fell fighting at the front. It was : a brutal thing to do. It was an outrage ; on common decency. These lads' names should be treated as semi-sacred. I would have cut off my right hand before I would have descended to so villainous a thing. But now he has done it, he must take the consequences, for it enables me to ask the people of this city, of this country, at whose door, on whoso head, does the blood of thojo two New Zenlanders lie? If they have hnen sent out to fight a war that was avoidable, if their, lives have been sacrificed to gratify the obstinacy and vindictivenoss of a man or a Government that plunged the country into an avoidable war, what ought to bo done to that man or that Government? As the French Jingoes said in tho Dreyfus case, "How dare you inquire into tho rights or wrongs of this matter? You are ' insulting the country and the army"; so this cheerful shedder of his brother's blood who sits at homo aud sends others to do the fighting cares nothing why or wherefore our sons and brothers have been sent to die in thousands of shot and ontoric on the desert | voldt. Oh! no, it's nothing to him. He loses nothing. He is very comfortable, Let tho fighting go on! Let the others do it all. It doesn't hurt him! Never mind any inquiries. We're all being covered with glory at the price of other neople's deaths. • On no account let anything be done to stop it. I wonder if this callous wretch—this newspaper clown—wean, as I do, a band of crape owing to this onjoyablo war. If ho did, he probably would not enjoy it so much. This gentleman who cares nothing for the lives of others should be forced to go and taks his turn in front of the Boers' rifles, and then, perhaps, ho would begin to realise something of the importance of the question, " Who are the men who are primarily responsible for the Empire being plunged I into this war?"—l am, etc., A. R. B.UIOLAT.