SIR OTTO NIEMEYER’S VISIT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18763, 30 December 1930, Page 12

SIR OTTO NIEMEYER’S VISIT.

To the Editor of the “ Timaru Herald.” Sir, —Apropos of the sermon by the Vicar of St. Mary’s and your editorial of this morning, the following statement by Mr Gilbert K. Chesterton, quoted with appropriate comments in “The Advocate,” should prove interesting to your many readers. I trust you will be able to find space for the enclosed clipping.—l am, etc., CLYDE CARR. Timaru, December 27. (Enclosure.) “Only by a series of lucky accidents has she been able to meet her bills for the last ten years. And this year the crash has come. Prices of wool and metals have slumped disastrously, a bad season has added to her troubles, and the Jews have begun to grow nervous. It may be taken as fresh evidence of our depravity that our sympathies lie with the Australians, rather than with the money lenders. The thinly veiled insolence of Sir Otto Niemeyer’s Report would be disgraceful in a communication from a five shilling debt collector to his victim. Flung at the heads of an independent people by a usurer’s traveller, it is intolerable; and it will be a sign that the Australian people are losing their habit of giving healthy material expression to deep political feeling if Sir Otto is permitted to leave Australia without a man-handling.” This is not an Australian criticism; it is an Englishman’s, a great Englishman’s—and those secular journals in Australia, whose spiritual home is in England, should note the tone of this criticism by an honourable man whose actual home is there. Nothing so forcible has been said of Sir Otto Niemeyer and his mission by any responsible Australian.—“ The Advocate,” 6/11/30.