REPLY TO G.B.S.

Southland Times, Issue 22296, 11 April 1934, Page 9

REPLY TO G.B.S.

To the Editor. Sir, —Who is this Bernard Shaw that your paper has been so full of for sometime? Is he our new GovenorGeneral, a member of the British Government, some big military pensioner or old veteran of the Great War that you all seem to stand in awe of? I knew Sir John Shelly, Sir Redvers Buller (townies of mine), Colonel Selby, Colonel Warren, Sergeant-Major Thompson at the Bluecoal School, all Crimean veterans, Colonel Greatwood (my uncle), Admiral Toihill (a relative), Lieutenant-Commander Philip (my nephew) and several others too many to mention here, and there is not one of them, if they were alive today, v.’ho would refuse to converse with me if I could only be with them to-day in the Homeland. And I defy Bernard Shaw or any other man to stand up in public and say that I have no right to call England my home. My ancestors came to Devon and Cornwall in 1066 A.D. from Saxony with William the Conqueror, and settled in Devon. My father and mother and ten of us were born in Devon, my eldest brother being in the G.E.T. Co., at the time was the first to light up Penzance with electricity over fifty years ago; he retired as superintendent. My youngest brother has just retired from the same post. Now the company belongs to the Imperial Government. Nearly all of our family are still in England and long for me to come heme. They think of New Zealand daily. It cost my mother over £6O to get me out here, to please me, in the s.s. Arawa forty-three years ago, and I nearly died on the voyage out. Bernard Shaw in your version says: “You sent your men to the Great War out of pure devilment, you need not have sent them unless you liked, etc.” May I ask “Did he know what he was talking about? Did Britain ever refuse them? Did they send these brave lads to Gallipoli to get rid of them? You can’t persuade me that Britain was capable of this, for Compton Tothill, born in Invercargill, lies somewhere there. He was called after his father G. C. Tothill, and Earl Compton, whose oil painting now hangs in my brother’s house in London. I for one would like half an hour with Bernard Shaw just to see his gills get white at knowing that a simple farmer is a wolf in sheep’s clothing when he says that I have no right .to call England my Home. I love the Homeland and will never despise Old Devon. None of my people has invested ms money in Russia or Denmark and so reject New Zealand, and I believe Bernard Shaw was glad to eat N.Z. lamb and butter while my sister’s child with just two cruisers helped and did hold the full German fleet to finish them up. I advise Bernard Shaw to think before he speaks with a grin in future of some nobler hearts than his own. I don’t want him either to leave this beautiful land of ours without reading this letter here, for I am cutting Bernard Shaw’s “digs” and sending them Home to be published in the Home papers, to show them how some with practically no sympathy can tour this country and share of the hospitality that New Zealand is noted for to be told just before leaving that those in the Motherland think nothing about us. This I have shown your readers to be incorrect, although I will says that such statements as these made by Mr Dynes Fulton and other members of the Dairy Division are not making but ruining our credit. | Thanking you for your kindness to I get in an apology for others that may | have felt it as keenly as I do.—l am, I etc F. TOTHILL. ; IMr Bernard Shaw is not pleased to ! eat lamb because he is a vegetarian.— Ed. S.T.]