HOLE AND CORNER.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14216, 4 June 1910, Page 6

HOLE AND CORNER.

Says the Napier "Telegraph" : —lt has boon said of the late Walt Yi hitman that lie wrote neither poetry nor prose. That- may be so. But lie set people thinking, and while lie wrote kept them thinking. lie oiii-e compressed into live words a whole sermon, more than a sermon. It was when lie spoke of ''The Insolence of Elected Persons." The world is i'nll of examples of it. The latest illustration is afforded by the \\Vlliiij£t.>ii Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, which has resolved to hold its committee meetings with doors closed to press and public. Nine members of the board carried this against seven others holding a more appropriate view of their functions. Then the more sensible portion of the board tried to carry a motion providing for statistical information beiiiji jriven to the press .'liter meetings. liven this was defeated, bv the casting vote ot the chairman, and the meetings are to by held in si ■'■ rot. This is sheer insolence. So insensible, however, are some elected persons to the sorry figures they cut as pinchbeck tyrants and prunella absolutists. that the reason given for ri-jp-tin:; the last proposition was that ''lt would leave locoliolcs for the leaking-out of other information." 'J he whole business is so preposterous, so insolently preposterous, that f-ne is nt a hiss how to further describe it- without offending against the canons of good taste. It is persons of this cla<-s who are the true enemies 01" the people. They have not learned oven the elements of democratic rule, and in consequence have been able to persuade themselves that they, as elected administrators of a Stato institution, aro its proprietors.