A Matter of Quotation

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 9

A Matter of Quotation

It . has been our misfortune to_ appear to have fallen irom journalistic grace in the eyes of one of our -ablest and most valued Catholic contemporaries. The manner of the Fall was this : In the ' Intercolonial »■ news of our issue of September 10 we pnnted six items relating to incidents (chiefly in connection . with the American fleet) which were reported in one shape or other both by the Catholic and the secular newspapers 'beyond .the water.' One or two brief items were, it appears, reprinted by us in the particular form in which they appeared in the columns of the Sydney Freeman's Journal. They were not however credited to our contemporary.; One paragraph, taken by us from -the enterprising Catholic Press, was; ■ however, attributed thereto, and the Freeman finds some dark significance in the incident— apparently a conspiracy- among its religious contemporaries to deprive it of its due meed of literary credit, "since the Tablet's supposed lapse from grace- comes 'after a similar act by the Melbourne Tribune.'

_ A glance at. the ' Intercolonial ' news-column of our previous .issue, and of our Papal Jubilee Number of September 17, would have sufficed to satisfy our esteemed Sydney contemporary that the incident contains no significance whatsoever. As, however .the question has been raised, we may here and- now state the principle that we, in common with the great bulk of careful journals in these countries, follow in regard to giving credit to contemporaries. We- acknowledge' the sources of (a) all editorial articles; (b) contributed articles, stories, sketches and poems ;.(c) extended reports; (d) news-items that are special or exclusive to any particular journal ; (c) news-items of any kind for the accuracy of which we are not prepared to accept responsibility, (f) We sometimes do, and sometimes do not— just as it happens,' or 'as the spirit moves us '— state the source of brief news paragraphs dealing with events which are of httle or transient interest, or which, besides being of no great

importance, are reported in ,one shape or other in several of our contemporaries. There is a wide range of ' free-trade 'in news-paragraphs which is universally accepted both by the secular and the religious press of every country, and of which our Sydney "contemporary makes a free and judicious and unacknowledged use. And (g) " we sometimes credit vaguely to ' Exchange, ' and sometimes do not credit, articles and paragraphs which are ' going (he rounds of the press,' and of which it is difficult or impossible for us to ascertain the original "spurce. All this gives, according to the custom of secular and Catholic newspapers in these countries, a fairly high average of journalistic courtesy. Our valued friend, the Sydney .Freeman, may possibly have a higher standard of journalistic chivalry. If so, it has (as we may also have) its moments of suspended attention. Quandoque bonus dormitat Homcrus— even good old Homer was sometimes caught nid-nid-nodding ; and it was, no doubt, in moments of pardonable somnolency that our able Sydney contemporary from time to time momentarily forgot its (hypothetically) higher code of courtesy and failed to acknowledge the source of many paragraphs of New Zealand Catholic intelligence special ta the Tablet— to which paragraphs, by the way, it is cordially welcome, whether with or without such acknowledgment. And, no doubt, it was in similar circumstances that if some time ago failed to credit this journal with a 'Current Topic,' which it printed in its entirety, and which involved on our part, some research in the by-ways of history and literature. We attached, and attach, no importance whatever to the incident —content that our respected Sydney fellow-worker in a good cause paid us the compliment of knowing a good thiig when it saw it, and satisfied that its omission to give us credit was due to one of those lapses of attention to which even the most scrupulously careful of our hard-wrought-sometimes overwrought—Catholic confreres are at times liable. Why we have even smilingly caught a very Homer among Catholic journals— a miracle of scrupulosity in this direction— nodding so deeply once upon a time that it published as i( S own editorial paragraph a ' bit o' writin' ' that was done by us a year or tWO . Defore - The "»» cannot be always bent, and constant tension produces, even in Bessemer steel, the crystallisation that portends early fracture.

We are honored by ow Catholic comemporarit-s almost a, much by the quotation of editorial matter that is unacknowledged as by that which is acknowledged-and, by both varieties, probably beyond our merits. But it has never once entered into the ante-chamber of our brain to complain of those which fail to complete the compliment of quotation of editorial articles" by the crowning compliment of acknowledgment. Of course we are pleased where credit is given to us, and we recognise the fact that such credit is fairly due. But no real harm is done-to us -by the failure of this or that contemporary to give such credit • and we exerc.se our right of ever putting the best possible construct.on upon such omissions. Life is too short, and the work ot Catholic journalism too serious, to pause in our great campaign, and waste, in quarrels over. trifles with confr6res and companions-.n-arms, the energy every ounce of which is needed to carry the standard of our holy Faith along some fresh roweor rampart of error or prejudice or ignorance or vice.