THE TIMES AND RESTORATION.

Southland Times, Issue 22749, 27 November 1935, Page 9

THE TIMES AND RESTORATION.

To the Editor. Sir, —Why have you suddenly become so transparently illogical? Why is your argument so obviously fabricated from moment to moment? Is it that your case for the pubs is so bad that you must flounder in your efforts to save it? Or is it merely incompetence? Take, for instance, this paragraph from your voluminous footnote: “What applies to Invercargill applies, of course, to fevery other nolicense area. That goes without saying, just as it goes without saying that those who are fighting so hard to maintain no-license in Invercargill would gladly see no-license in Wallace and Awarua too, though they are doing nothing to bring it about.” Mr Editor, there is a local poll in Invercargill and one in Mataura; there is no poll on the No-License issue in Wallace and Awarua. If you must shuffle, pray don’t be so transparent about it. Your reference to the Southland League’s advocacy of tourist traffic is juvenile. The Southland League is working for the whole of Southland, and it and other bodies are awake to the value of the tourist traffic to Southland; but here again you try to edge away from the point. My argument, Mr Editor, is about the value of extra tourist traffic to Invercargill as the price of inflicting fourteen or more hotels on Invercargill’s shopkeepers and wageearners. You say: “For us” (meaning the “Times,” or Invercargill?) “it is simply a question whether we want to have any share in the business and profits of the tourist industry.” If that is the question, why do you not first discover what Invercargill (we are concerned with Invercargill in this argument, you know, so don’t keep wandering to national generalities when you are faced with difficulties) will have to pay for this share, and whether the share will be profitable? That you will not face up to. You have not even contested my reasons for saying Invercargill will not be a great tourist centre, and you have not dared to attack my estimates of the amount these “extra tourists” will spend in Invercargill if your hopes are realized. Instead, you slither about with sententious generalities, which are really evasions, and with truths so blatantly misapplied that they become childish as arguments. In this letter I have referred to two examples. And your slithering is so clumsy and so apparent that one can see you are indulging in manoeuvres to which you are not yet accustomed. The Southland Times is one of' the casualties of the liquor party’s campaign. Finally, you say that I “will probably begin to think of something else as soon as the poll is over.” You are right. It will be of those who have fallen from high estate. I am, etc., NOT DECEIVED. [A letter of this character calls for no answer. It tells its own sorry tale. —Ed. S.T.]