PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL!

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11713, 18 August 1902, Page 4

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL!

We are afraid that a good many of Mr. Willis's constituents will wink a sceptical eye at his explanation re the "tpirivate and oonfiedirtial" conference between himself and the licensed victuallers?. He evidently does not think it good enough to take the electors into his confidence, and consequently he contents himself by telling: them not ■what did occur, but what did not occur, at the meeting. He was not asked to "take a pledge!" He neither gave a pledge nor took one! Why this emphatic declaration? Has anyone suggested anything aDout a "pledge?" Is it customary for the licensed victuallers, when in conference assembled, to require a, pledge from those who are initiated into the inner mysteries of the order? Mr. Willis's porridge is too thin. Anyone of ordinary intelligence knows that there are many things which a man may be asked to do without subjecting himself to any direct pledge or condition, and it may be taken for granted that Mr. Willis was not asked to attend the meeting "ju«t for the fun of the thing" or to take afternoon tea with the members. Ifc is ajll very well for Mr. Willis to .say that were be asked to do so he would just as readily attend a committee meeting of Prohibitionists. It is very good of him to bo so obliging,; buti, in view of thu organisation •which played such a prominent part; in him election^ he is scarcely likely to be aeked to attend stfeh a meeting. The two organisations, it must be admitted, differ somewhat in their respective aims and interests, and one of them certainly could not derive any benefit, personally, fb'i1 its members from anything that Mr. Willis could do. That,, however, is a ptfint which does not require elaboration. Suffice it to «;ay that there has been -a, certain amount of unrest in regard to licensing matters in Wanganui during the ipast few months, that there was some talk of an awful indictment bejng framed for presentation to the Minister for Justice, and that it is freely rumoured that a certain section of the community is anxious to secure the removal from Wanganui of a certain public official. The "private and confidential," following so closely upon these, perhaps irrelevant incidentals, was scarcely calculated to silence the speculative reasoning of the "man in the street."

The "explanation" which we publish this morning—burdened as it is with that mysterioais reference to "pledges and conditions"—only serves to make the darkness more painfully visible. Therefore, Mr. Willis has Only himself to blame if intelligent electors'jump to the conclusion with regard to the conference that), like an ancient egg, there is m«re in it than meets the eve.