OUR READERS’ VIEWPOINT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5600, 2 April 1943, Page 3

OUR READERS’ VIEWPOINT

A WRITER WITHOUT A NAME Sir, —I am writing to congratulate you on the masterly effort you made of your editorial of Monday, 29th March. It was truly great! Perhaps you thought so yourself, or else you would not have spent hours of your valuable time in writing the article. On the death of our late Prime Minister thousands of people—even our own King and Queen —mourned his passing. I wonder why you did not see one little thing in his whole life to admire. To-day even in England

there are references to his wonderful work; he has left memories that will live for ever. How tiny your little contribution was.

The other little item (referring to a train and one passenger)—how narrow the mind of the person who put it in I Mr Goosman (our own M.P.) and Mrs Goosman were the only two passengers to get off the same train at Frankton that night. Mr Goosman was not too small to attend the unveiling ceremonies; he, too, like the other gentlemen you made reference to. can walk down Alexandra Street and meet more friends in one block than you can in the whole town. I wonder why ?

I will kindly ask you to step outside your office to-day in the sunshine and see how long a shadow you can cast. Perhaps it would be quite a long one if you had a knife in your pocket with

which to cut those legs from your chest. You could then be like the three men I have just mentioned—a man among men.

I remember one of those men used to write twenty years ago the most intelligent letters you have ever published In your paper. Perhaps those

were the good old days I You were then just a struggling man, too. Why, after all these years you could have been a great man in Te Awamutu, just as our dear Joe Savage was throughout the world. What a difference it would have made tQ you to have everyone nodding to you and saying: “ There goes Warby ! Isn’t he great ? ” Perhaps you, too, would have had lots of friends in your own little town. Try it and see 1 It is wonderful to be a man among men. Stand erect and face the world, and you will be the richer for it.

(Usually we have a waste-paper basket for unsigned letters, but this “ outburst,” even if seriously intended, has a touch of inconsistency which our readers will enjoy. Evidently one reader of Monday’s article is so blinded by partisan bias and swayed by political bigotry that he cannot understand what he reads. The article in .question acknowledged in the late Mr Savage the estimable quality of sincerity, making then a comparison with the insincerity of the present-day administrators who have diverted from the nation’s war effort so much of the goods and services at a time of short supply and Rationing. On that, surely, there can be little conflict of opinion. In any case, like begets like; this correspondent could not detect insincerity. for he even says, “ Stand erect and face the world,”' and then hides himself in the shadow of anonymity! Can it be suggested that the person who writes an abusive letter and omits to sign a name has at least one virtue ? It is perhaps something to realise that the signature may be as worthless as the abuse !—Ed.)

Sir, —I would like to reply to Te Rore “Anti-Sixth Columnist.” As this T-centre accommodates the G-men from Te Rore I must take it he is here among us. Firstly, the day and date of parades is decided by a majority vote by the G-men themselves. Sale dates in both Pirongia and Te Awamutu are always left free. Men are treated fairly, and if difficulty arises on the farm they get every consideration, and any G-man who is keen and honest on the job has no difficulty in missing the parade if circumstances warrant it. Regarding his argument about the pub, this doesn’t come into consideration when deciding parade dates, and he knows it. I can only think of one individual in this centre who would write this letter, who is never satisfied with the dates of parades fixed, and the general opinion among G-men is it is a case of Ist, 2nd and last, and the part about the return of the boys overseas, etc., would be mostly eyewash.—l am, etc.,

D. M. CAMPBELL, O.C. Pirongia T-Centre.