NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 15 December 1921, Page 26

NOTES

Acknowledgement We gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a large number of telegrams and letters sent us during the past week to express the appreciation of readers of the Tablet for the part it has played during the past five years in explaining the position and defending the aims and the reputation of the leaders of the Irish people. The congratulations were sent us in the belief that the final victory is. now secure. Many of them deeply moved us by their warm approval and appreciation of what we have done, and all we can say is that our work was at all times a Tabor of love and that when worries and vexations came we found consolation not only in the reflection that we were doing our simple duty but also in the knowledge that we had the support of every man and woman of Irish blood who understood. Let us say here too that from Englishmen, and from New Zealanders, who were disgusted by the Prussian frightfulness practised on a small nation and by the shameful lies with which our daily press supported murder and sacrilege, we have had constant and loyal help. We trust the end of the long fight is now in view, and we offer our cordial thanks to all those friends who stood by us when we were in the wars ourselves. A Word About the “Tablet” At times, during the fight, we were tempted to publish some of the letters of abuse we received from rabid anti-irishmen—some of them born of Irish fathers and mothers. Once or twice we found it necessary to remind critics that payment of a year’s subscription did not by any means entitle them to consider themselves not only editor, sub-editor, and manager of the paper, but the body of directors as well. On the whole, such little skirmishes were few, and they only helped to make things less monotonous. There are always readers who want everything their own way and who are incapable of seeing any point of view but their own. Of course it is not a reconstructed Tablet, but a doctor people of that kind require most. Now a paper like the Tablet must of its nature be a compromise. It is not what any given individual would like best, nor does it try to please this or that individual. It has to aim at pleasing the majority of its readers, and the editor has never for a moment imagined that he could perform the miracle of pleasing everybody. We have to fulfil the aims of a Catholic family paper, and, speaking from a personal point of view, we had to do this at a time when the race and the land from which our faith came to us were attacked by a widespread and unscrupulous conspiracy against the truth. There are among our readers a few who, in their opposition to Ireland, made our defence of the cause which every daily paper in the Dominion belied an occasion for overt or underhand attacks upon us. There are a few others to whom Ireland means nothing, and they would have us tell them about China and Japan rather than about how Canon Magner was murdered and how Berkley Road Church was violated. The answer to all such critics is that the very great majority, of our supporters, the very great majority of those who built the schools and the churches of New Zealand, want Irish news and say the paper is dull if they do not get it in every issue. It i,s as a rule the destructive critics who do little or nothing for any cause under the sun. While trying to do the best we can for them, naturally our first aim is to please most those who help us most, even if it does happen that we like to give them exactly what they seem to like, that is the truth about Ireland.

A Qualified Critic , h We could easily fill a page with flattering testif monies from v. a score of archbishops and bishops in ‘Australasia and in Ireland,' in proof that in the view of men of learning, untrammelled by personal or national - prejudice, the Tablet has been doing its work

satisfactorily during these years of storm' and stress that have elapsed since we took charge of it. - No doubt if we did that our anti-Irish critics would'at once console themselves by saying that if some croziers were raised in our defence there might have been others that threatened to hamstring us. So, in place of quoting the prelates, we will quote a layman who is eminently qualified to pronounce an opinion. His remarks were contained in a letter to a friend of ours who sent him a copy of the Tablet now and then. We may also add that we have never met the writer and that he is not a Sinn Feiner, Here is the extract in which he refers to the Tablet :

“I wish you would send me a copy of that New Zealand paper occasionally if you think of it. In' a leisure hour I have been studying the copies you gave me, and I can tell you your friend is a first-rate editor. He has the gift of interesting. Be writes crisply and vividly, from the outlook of a man of culture and a man of the world (sane and broad) as well as of an Irish Catholic with the root of the matter in him. A too, too rare combination this—appallingly rare! But it is not merely his writing I think well of, but his whole putting together of the paper, his selection of matter, the" thing in which the judgment of the editor, who is also the critic, shows. I can speak as an expert on this ground, for I have been a bit of an editor myself daily papers, weekly reviews, monthly magazines (even Catholic ones, e.g. the Catholic World of N.Y., of which I was editor what time I was also associate-editor of the N.A. Review, and literary editor of the N.T. Star, etc., etc.). And I still keep an eye (from the watch-tower) on the Catholic press. Taking it all round I really think this N.Z. Tablet is about the best edited Catholic family paper I know. I consider it a great thing for the Church in New Zealand that its organ is in the hands of your friend. Tell him this. A word of honest appreciation helps a man. And he has got the artistic temperament too and cares more for the judgment of the equites than of the groundlings!” Now the editor is not so foolish as to take all this credit to himself. It belongs to the staff as well as to the editor ; and to the directors as well as to the staff. We do not quote it for any vainglorious motive, but only in the hope that it may help unreasonable people to become more reasonable, and with the object of letting those who do not understand our difficulties see exactly what a man who does understand—and that better than anyone in New Zealand—thinks of our efforts to make the New Zealand' Tablet worthy of the memory of the great and fearless Irishman who founded it. Nay, the tribute paid us by the critic we cited is not for us alone, and gladly we lay it on Dr. Moran’s grave.