LOGIC OF ELECTION CHARGES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20284, 6 December 1935, Page 15

LOGIC OF ELECTION CHARGES

To the Editor of “ The Timaru Herald ” Sir—To remove some misunderstanding, may I make a statement about my election letter? I want to say first that Mr Thomas was criticised in it on one point and one point only—his remarks on the malnutrition question. Neither directly nor by implication did I make any other criticism of him. No reflection on him personally was intended and none was made. The letter was concerned chiefly with showing that some correspondents who were urging people to vote against Mr Carr for personal reasons were themselves, whether they knew it or not, moved by political ones. The rest of it discussed the charges against Mr Carr of disrespect towards women and of irreverence, and that against Mr Thomas of denying the existence of malnutrition as a result of insufficient food. Only the first of these is relevant to my present purpose. In quoting Mr Thomas's remark at his women’s meeting in conjunction with Mr Carr’s, I wished to point out to the correspondent and anyone agreeing with him or her how absurd it was to read into the latter’s any disrespect towards women. That this was my intention is obvious from the comment on this point made in my letter. The actual charge against Mr Carr and the hypothetical one against Mr Thomas “may,” I wrote, “be dismissed in a word as silly.” The letter was in all respects except one a defence of Mr Carr; the one respect in which it was an attack on Mr Thomas concerned the question of malnutrition.—l am, W. J. SCOTT. Timaru, December 5.