A MATTER OF TASTE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16906, 4 December 1922, Page 6

A MATTER OF TASTE.

In the hurly-burly of an election campaign some of the combatants are inclined to relax the standard of conduct which they' strive to maintain in more ordinary times. They become less scrupulous in their anxiety to score points off their opponents, and regar.i as legitimate tactics which they would hesitate to use in their calmer moments. The public is very tolerant, holding that candidates must be prepared to take hard, even unfair knocks, and still come up smiling. There are occasions, however, when protest should lie made. At a meeting on Friday evening last, Mr L. M. Isitt complained that his Labour opponent, the Rev J. K. Archer, had published a letter which apparently had been written by a missionary in condemnation of indentured labour It was not stated that the letter referred to indentured labour in Samoa, but that was the almost irresistible in ference. Mr Isitt stated that he had investigated the authenticity of the letter. He found that the alleged letter had. been pieced together out of a book by Burton. The references were to indentured labour in Fiji in 1907, and not to the present conditions in Samoa. Mr Archer, in a. letter in this issue, says that the message neither asserted nor suggested that he was referring to indentured labour in Samoa, and that if people understood it to do so “ that was their fault.'* He is silent as to how it was built up. We do not think that Mr Archer im--1 proves his case by his excuse. The New Zealand public are not concerned about conditions in Fiji fifteen years ago, but they are concerned in present conditions in Samoa. Mr Archer may believe that lie was entitled to go to a book and select extracts which could follow his introductory sentence, “ A missionary writes,*’ but he cannot expect the electors of Christchurch North to applaud hia sense of propriety. It was “ slim,” to say the j least of it, and many people will apply S a much harder term.