PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18342, 30 May 1931, Page 9

PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —When Mr Sykes launched his attack against me in this controversy I was more than pleased, because the attack came from one competent to speak with authority "and knowledge of his subject, andialso because he had committed himself to some absurd and extravagant statements. As he has now accused me of “sneering," “insolence,” etc., I will presently show how completely his first letter answered to these terms, but I do not resent this form of attack in any opponent who thinks it beneficial to his case. All I needed to do was to force on Mr Sykes' attention by means of questions the Impossible assertions to which he had committed himself His only possible courses were either to climb down-r-modifying or withdrawing what he had said—or to try some method of evasion. To guard as much as possible against the latter I numbered the questions and tried to keep Mr Sykes up to the oollar by reminding your readers of his association with the protectionist movement in England, without the slightest suspicion that I was revealing anything to which Mr Sykes would be sensitive. In order to ginger up his attack further I described protection as in Its essence a “system of graft,”-—a proposition which I expected to he oalled on, and was, and am, ready to support. In order to minimise the ground on which Mr Sykes could manoevure I limited my questions to six, and Informed him that theso would clear the ground a little, and more were to follow.

It is with some regret I find that, after careful preparation for a combat on ground chosen by my opponent and on his challenge, he has avoided me by (metaphorically) committing suicide. I am not concerned with the fate of Mr Sykes, hut I was not without hope that the merits of the questions at issue should be thoroughly ventilated. This terrible warrior who has exhausted the language of abuse In ignoring my questions, and has darkly hinted at his unprintable Imprecations on reading my letter, has lied the field. If- he would be good enough to forward you a memorandum of the unprintable language he claims to have used, perhaps you would allow, it to be Inspected by the curi-ous-minded .and those interested In the psychology of a protectionist gentleman in extremis. . I will not waste the time of your readers in attempting to traverse half a oolumn of vituperation by Mr Sykes, but one or two observations are relevant. .Mr Sykes has purported to reply to only two of my six questions, and neither reply is satisfactory. The remaining four questions placed him in such a position that for an nonest disputant the only possible course was to climb down, and this position Mr Sykes had not the moral, courage .to face. The delicious humour of attacking me as “the most evasive individual it has ever been my lot to deal with” will be appreciated When it comes from a man who has completely refused to answer a special list of numbered questions, and has sought to cover his precipitate flight In a cloud of abuse. The man who wrote in his first letter: “At this time It seems incredible that Christian men should be so warped In their thinking and actions as to support a theory which is the very negation of Christian ethics" is the same person who now declares “any man is an ass to Impute to those who do not agree with him a lack of intelligence." I leave Mr Sykes to assume the cap in the privacy to which he has betaken himself. If I ever had any doubts as to Mr Sykes’ intelligence they arose from the inconsistency of his own statements, and have now been dispelled by his very wise but somewhat undignified and precipitate retirement from, the controversial field. A man who cannot state his case accurately or logically is much safer on the platform, where by confining himself to the "broader issues” which Mr Sykes mentions lie is relatively free from the carping critics who insist that he should stand up to the letter of what he put in writing. Into the Agapemone- of true believers to which Mr Sykes now retires I do not wish to follow him, but if ne makes admission, by ticket only, and imposes a ban on rude questions, he will find himself at home in the atmosphere of the true protectionist.—l am, etc., DOUGLAS SEYMOUR. Hamilton, May 29, 1931.