THEN AND NOW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 49, 6 December 1900, Page 6

THEN AND NOW.

The Speaker is particularly outepoken in the course of an article on 'The Responsibility of the Press.' The Institute of Journalists had the general subject before them at their recent meeting, and The Speaker boldly dots the i and crosses the t. • There is,' sayß The Speaker, ' in this country a newspaper known as the Daily Mail, owned and conducted by a person of the name of Harmsworth. There is also in this country (luckily for it) a soldier of the name of Sir William Butler. This gentleman was in oommand of our forces in Cape Colony at the moment when Sir Alfred Milner, at the bidding of Mr Chamberlain, was preparing the disasters with which we are now supped and full.' The writer then goes on to recapitulate the reasons which led to Sir William Butler's resignation of the Cape command (the Daily Mail called his resignation his ' recall '), and proceeds : ' The relative position and importance of these two people— Mr Harmsworth and Sir William Butler — will be readily appreciated. What was their relative power for good or evil in the State 1 On October 6 last year the former wrote or caused to be written these words : " Next to Kruger and the Little Englanders, Sir William Butler is the cause of the present war." On October 14 this egregious person continued as follows : " The Boers are notoriously bad losers, but unfortunately our military operations at the Gape were for a time in the hands of Sir William Butler, who eventually had to come away from the Cape on account of his pro-Boer sympathies." There is a large category of persons who do not prosecute. They value their country's honor too highly to wash the dirty linen of politics in public at the outset of a campaign. Perhaps they are gentlemen and hampered by all the sensitiveness of their rank ; and so long as there is no private prosecution for libel, statements such as those made by Mr Harmsworth against Sir William Butler are unchecked. The Daily Mail, in the first months of the war, reached a circulation of close upon a million ; it says so, and we believe it, though they vouch for it themselves. Well, then, an appreciable part of our reading and working population read this abominable slander — they had no reason to doubt it— the greater part of it, presumably, believed. Its author has received no punishment.' Is that so certain? A paper (says the Tablet) which abuses public confidence is sure sooner or later to be found out. Meanwhile, perhaps, the oddest thing of all about this campaign of calumny waged by Mr Harmsworth against Sir William Butler is the suddenness of its collapse. In recording the General's appointment to the Aldershot command the other day, the Daily Mail gave a flattering biographical account of his services, and alluded to the existence of an agitation against him on his return from the Cape for all the world as if it been conducted by somebody else.