THE FANATICAL ADVOCATE.

Southland Times, Issue 20174, 10 May 1927, Page 6

THE FANATICAL ADVOCATE.

Mr A. E. Robinson, the gentleman who was responsible for the announcement that the Tooley Street merchants were on the brink of defeat and saw within a few days the price fixation policy of the Dairy Control Board reversed, continues to labour energetically in the effort to blame the Prime Minister and Mr A. S. Paterson for the board’s defeat. He sees something sinister in everything Mr Paterson did and because no one has contradicted his statement that Mr Paterson wished the fixed price at the beginning of the season to be put low, he proceeds to regard as proved his magnificent charges of political interference and Tammanyism. To a man of Mr Robinson’s mentality the acceptance of the one fact means an acceptance of the view that Mr Coates and Mr Paterson were rascals, plotting to defraud the producer in the interests of the merchants in New Zealand and at Home. Mr Robinson’s letter we publish for tne purpose of disclosing the ludicrously weak foundations on which it rests. It does not dawn on Mr Robinson that men may honestly oppose a majority. Mr Paterson’s proposal to lower the price of New Zealandcontrolled butter at the beginning of the season doubtless aimed at facilitating the dispersal of the butter held in store, so that this would be out of the way of the board when it developed its marketing operations with the arrival of the larger shipments. Mr Paterson may have been wrong in the view that action along these lines was helpful to the board, but subsequent events did not prove that he was wrong. The important point, however, is that Mr Robinson precludes all possibility of such an explanation. His attitude is that of the fanatic, blind to all reason, and ready to believe the blackest things about those who disagree with him, the men who sometimes in the hour of defeat turn and rend those who sought to help them. Mr Robinson’s quotation of phrases used at a party caucus as evidence of Mr Coates’s perfidy is in keeping with the wildness of his earlier declaration. Producers may be pardoned if they show some bewilderment at the fury of men like Mr Robinson, some surprise at the case with which they besmirch the honour of men in high positions, and impatience at the persistence with which these attacks are

made without opportunity being given to Mr Paterson to present his case or to Mr lorns to speak on the subject. It would be just as easy to set up a case that the advocates of control were seeking to confine the marketing of New Zealand produce to a few friendly agents, or that the whole thing was a plot to antagonise the British buyer in the interests of the Danes. Such charges would be deeply and properly resented by the advocates of control, who would demand incontrovertible proof; but the extremist is quick to ascribe heinous offences to the Prime Minister without a particle of evidence worthy of the name. Mr Robinson’s letter is published because it carries within itself the complete condemnation of its writer’s ability to look at this question with two eyes.