THE NO LICENSE QUESTION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12658, 21 November 1905, Page 2

THE NO LICENSE QUESTION.

MR. PALMER AND THE "CHRONICLE."

To the Editor. Sir,— Referring to the leading article in your issue of to-day and the matter contained therein, I consider that you havo attempted to deal an unwarranted and cowardly Mow at a man and a causo that did not deserve it. You cannot attempt to hide your fault beneath the cloak of ignorance, because you peso as a leader of the.people, and ono who has such a superabundance of intelligence as to be able to lead othera, who, by your writings, you supposo to' lack sufficient intelligence to judge for themselves. You above all, as a journalist, cannot fail to know the importance attachable to the date of : a newspaper and the reading matter therein; further, you could not have failed to note that the remark I made on Saturday night re the publication of Mr. Benefield's letter was as follows:—That it would be published in the "Chronicle" if permitted. These) wero the exact words. Now, sir, you pose as a just, humane man, one who 13 willing to ruin every man engaged in tho liquor traffic, with their wives and families, because you believe, or say you believe, that a larger number than they compriso suffer by the traffic. If you aro so honourable and just, why attempt to distort a simple remark, and make dishonest comment thereon • for tho purpose of discounting the value of myself and party as evidence? You know perfectly well that you havo frequently apologised in your columns for having to hold over certain correspondence on account pressure on your space. You also are able fully to estimate the value of the difference of such a letter as Mr. Benefield's appearing on the day I said it would appear, and not appearing on that particular day. I cannot find any other interpretation of your conduct, than that you are making usto of the power of your position, as editor and controller of a newspaper, to twist and distort for your own ends a simple statement that you, of %11 others, should recognise as a fair and honest one. We'have before now frequently heard false and extravagant statements made by members of your party that could not be substantiated, and now, if never before, you have attempted what any fairminded man would consider to be a cowardly uso of the position you oo cupy. You are well aware that I and others have our business to attend to, and therefore no time to devote to undoing the wrongs that you seek to inflict on us, and therefore when you fill your newspaper as you do with these attacka upon unarmed foes, you act tho part of a coward, and we rest content with commending ourselves and interests to a fair-minded and -just. pul>llo-laactm 'et0-' J.S. PALMER. [Like Mr. Palmer, we are quite prepared to leave the matter, to a fairminded and just public, and therefore we content ourselves by reprinting the article to which Mr. Palmer takes such violent exception. We may add, however, that the words now given by Mr. Palmer are not the words which he used on Saturday night. The words which he did use were taken down at tho moment of their utterance by a representative of the "Chronicle," who took tho precaution to have the correctness of his note verified by an impartial by-stander. "IP IT IS ALLOWED TO BE PUBLISHED." In the course of his remarks at the open-air "No-License" meeting on Saturday evening,* Mr. Palmer, the President of the^Wanganui Licensed Victuallers' Association, saw fit to go out of his way to pass a gratuitous and unwarrantable reflection on the "Chronicle." Referring. ,to a letter which, he said, Mr. W. T. Benefield had written in reference to the recent Aramoho meeting, and which, he suggested, substantiated the correctness of the Presa Association message, which he (Mr. Palmer) had inspired, he went on to say that the letter "would appear in Monday morning'i! paper, if it is allowed to be published/ Our readers will sea at once the significance of the concluding portion >of this statement. The only inference fo be drawn from Mr. Palmer's ungenerous words was that it wag doubtful whether' a letter representing their side of the question would bo admitted to our columns. No one knows better than Mr. Palmer how absolutely impartial wo; have been in tho conduct of bur correspondence columns. He knows perfectly well that we have accorded free admission to all letters, anonymous and otherwise, which have been sent or brought to us by writers in defence of License, and we challenge him to cite one instance of a refusal on our part to publish any letter which could legitimately be published in the columns of a newspaper. On tho very morning of the day on which ho went out of his way to publicly level an imputation of unfairness at the "Chronicle" there appeared one anonymous "liquor" letter which alone monopolised more than a column of our space, in addition to which there also appeared two other letters, one of which was signed by the legal adviser of the Licensed Victuallers' Association. And, curiously enough, on that same morning only one letter, and that a short one, appeared from the pen of a "NoLicenso" writer. How, then, can he justify the suggestion of prohibitive partiality on our part with which he supplemented his reference to Mf. Benefield's letter? Was it, may we ask, the outcomo of a sudden awakening? Did ife occur to Mr. Palmer, in a flash of inspiration, as it were, that a boycott on our part would be but a legitimate quid pro quo for the boycott to which he and his Association have subjected the "Chronicle" ? Did it suddenly : strike Mr. Palmer that it was perhaps a little bit mean to- flood the columns of the "Chronicle" with fhee correspondence and to withhold from it the daily column of advertising matter for K the insertion of which they would have to pay? And did it, at the same time, occur to Mr. Palmer that the_ action oZ the Licensed Victuallers was in this respect in marked contrast to the impartiality of their "No-License" opponents? Pcobably so, and in that case, Mr. Palmer's words may perhaps be construed into an admission as to what he himself would do under similar circumstances, rather than as having been deliberately intended to convey to the public the actual literal meaning of the %'.-ords themselves. We may say at once, if, indeed, it is at all necessary for us to say £*>, that we are in no way concerned' at the absence of the liquor party's advertisement from our columns. Wo simply mention it in order to emphasise the unfairness of Mr. Palmer's statement.