CAMBRIDGE PARISH.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19014, 3 August 1933, Page 6

CAMBRIDGE PARISH.

STATEMENT BY THE VIOAR. t We have received the following communication from Rev. G. G; Bell, Vicar of Cambridge:— “ In fairness to my parishioners and myself I must ask for space in which to correct certain false impressions given by your report of the annual meeting of parishioners held in Cambridge on .Monday last. It is all the more necessary that I should do so* because persistent attempts are being made to suggest that my parishioner! are hostile to me, whereas I asse”4 that, in spite of their having been deceived with regard to me and poisonea against me for over a year and a-half, during my absence in England on furlough and since my return, my wife and I continue to receive nothing bul the most unmlstakeable friendliness from the vast majority of the parishioners. Close examination of the accounts of meetings held at Cambridgs during recent months, as given In the newspaper press, will reveal the fact that any opposition to me and all obstruction to business at such meetings has been the work of very few men, all of them members of the former vestry of the parish—men whose actions during my absence and since my return are in > question at such meetings, and who have been unable to deny the truth of the case I have publicly presented against them. One of the most persistent obstruotors absented himself from the meeting of parishioners held on Friday, July 27 last. At that meeting, when I had completed my statement of the truth, a parishioner suggested that, if there were any Inaccuracies in my statement —and I had not spared the former vestrymen castigation—such possible inaocuracles should be pointed out, and unfair discussion of me about the streets of the town stopped. A majority of the former vestrymen was present.

“ After the challenge of the parishioner whom 1 have quoted, not one single word was said, and, after waiting awhile and repeatedly inviting discussion of my statement or of any matter rising out of It, I rose and expressed my gratitude to Almighty God that at last I had been allowed to tell my parishioners, in meeting assembled, the truth, and that my presentation of the truth could not be gainsaid. Yet, after my withdrawal' from the meeting on Monday last—a meeting I was obliged to adjourn on account of continued obstructionist tactics—the men who could net refute my statements in my presence showed themselves very . bold in my absence, and you publish their statements. By so doing you have, as I suggest, done serious disservice to the parishioners of Cambridge, as well ns to me, and I niual ask that you will also publish this defence of mv parishioners in general.’ l