DEVOTION TO DUTY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23527, 16 June 1938, Page 7

DEVOTION TO DUTY

MEMBERS OF GOVERNMENT REPLY TO MR F. W. DOIDGE Surprise at the remarks of Mr F. W. Doidge that the speeches of Government members read better than they sounded over the air was expressed by Mr C. H. Burnett, M.P.. Government candidate for Tauranga in an address last week. “I fee] that every right-thinking person must deplore these observations.” Mr Burnett said; “ but I consider it my duty to take this opportunity to refer to these unfortunate comments. I have colleagues who have been educated in State schools, colleges and university and we have men who had to begin life in the mines and in industry who never had the opportunity even to go co a primary school as we understand it to-day. . These men, by industry, integrity and devotion to duty, have climbed to the highest positions within the gift of their fellows in the representative institutions of the State. All have made sacrifices and some have suffered imprisonment more than once rather than abandon a principle. “ Nothing that Mr Doidge has ever spoken or said will remove from the hearts of the majority of the people, and particularly of the working people of this country, their esteem of these men for devotion to the cause of humanity.” Mr Burnett added that the question of who did or did not speak the King’s English might exercise the mind of Mr Doidge and his friends, but the thing that mattered was the principles for which a man stood and the honesty with which he espoused his cause.