BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 14, 1949 CHRISTMAS CARNIVAL, 1948

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 76, 14 December 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 14, 1949 CHRISTMAS CARNIVAL, 1948

In a letter published Monday, Mr H. G. Warren, chairman of the Carnival Committee, takes the Beacon to task for last Wednesday’s leading article which deplored the fact that only six people' turned out to a public meeting for the purpose of organising this year’s Christmas Carnival. He thinks we were “a little too tough” in our criticism of local apathy towards this sort of thing. , We find it hard to agree with him, but if a man who works like he does for local causes can feel happy about the sort of thing we criticised, we suppose we might as well give up worrying about it, too. We do sin.cerely wish this year’s carnival every success and intend to operate fully with the Committee to that end. - 1 Mr Warren seeffis to'have read in haste and not properly digested all we said. The subject under discussion was not quite what he seems to think it was. We threw no bricks at financial or active supporters of last year’s effort. We recall having published the Committee’s appreciation of their generosity at the time, and we share that appreciation. But we did and do feel it our duty to focus attention upon the fact that ib is more than ordinarily difficult to'get people to take an active part in such organisations here.

Mr Warren wants to know, and is quite entitled to ask, why our Editor was not present at the meeting referred to. An illness of long standing and some severity, of which Mr Warren'is well aware, prevented it. But an apology with an assurance of aptive co-operation was sent.

In view of the work and space we put into helping to get last year’s carnival < going, we feel quite entitled to be even more than “a little rude” to any critic who would not come out in the open and back his criticism with evidence stronger than the evidence we had and have that such criticism was ignorant, " Unfair and quite unfounded. The incidents associated with last year’s carnival that Mr Warren does not think we observed, and many others, we seem to recall, and think they were woven into some of the stories we published. The people concerned we gladly include amongst the “hard-working few” -we praised last Wednesday. While we appreciate Mr-War-ren’s desire to defend those who did help, we feel it is quite unnecessary, because he have never implied nor said anything against which those people need to be defended. should have liked some of the apathetic' ones to have been stirred to action.

With a record 'probably second to none in this town as a worker for the community’s good arid progress, Mr Warren 'might be expected to be the last to want to defend those wrio will not help themselves or their town by doing anything or giving anything for local causes, and we have to give him fullmarks for his charity in so doing. We feel a little hurt that he should read into our criticism of those people any aspersion on those who did help. We do riot mind being accused of being undignified. It is not uncommon to earn that accusation for strong and straightforward expressions of opinion. If the choice lies between lack of dignity and lacks of courage, we prefer to lack dignity.