The Globe. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1879.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1591, 26 March 1879, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1879.

At last our contemporaries the “ Star ’’ and the “ Lyttelton Times ” (of course, speaking through the “ Star”) have been “ drawn.” Accused more than a month ago of the commercially dishonest transaction of appropriating telegrams paid for solely the Globe and other papers, and placing them under the head of “ Special” to the “ Lyttelton Times ” and “ Star,” they have kept a most judicious silence. When people or firms are directly accused of a want of commercial morality it is ordinarily considered eomme ilfaut to attempt to rebut the charge at once. Our contemporaries, however, have sat in their editorial chairs quiet, and speechless on the subject, for four long weeks. We thought at first that the “ Lyttelton Times” and “ Star” might possibly consider that their want of common honesty might be made up for by a display of the truly Christian virtues of patience and meekness, and that they might be fancying that the beautiful feature of journalistic long suffering they were exhibiting, might act as a beneficent example to other companies who are wont to flare up somewhat hastily when accused of transactions hardly considered honorable in the general affairs of life. We have been mistaken however. Our contemporaries have not kept silence, moved by the higher motives alluded to above, they have simply been nursing their wrath in impotent rage that they cannot either exculpate themselves or accuse their accusers of meanness similar to their own. For four weeks they have thus sat, gnawing their journalistic vitals, but at last their self repression has become unbearable to them, and, sooner than not give tongue, they have resorted to deliberate and malicious representation. Last night the “Star” charged the “ Press ” with appropriating, without acknowledment, a telegram which appeared in the “ Lyttleton Times.” This charge, our contemporary must have known, to be utterly destitute of truth. The “ Star ” is well aware that the telegram in question was forwarded by Reuter, and was addressed “ Times and Press.” It is true it was accidently omitted from the columns of our Cashel Street contemporary on the morning on which it was telegraphed; but it was received, with all its imperfections, and paid for, and was not copied from the column of the “ Lyttelton Times.” The “ Star ” knows well enough that all Reuter’s telegrams are forwarded to all the papers and paid for by them. We do not, of course, expect an admission of the falsity of last night’s charge from the “ Star.” A journal that deliberately appropriates the property of its more enterprising contemporaries, and declines even to acknowledge the theft, is not at all likely to be ashamed when clearly convicted of deliberate misrepresentation. We fancy that the “Star’s” article of last night is not at all likely to make the “ Press” cease using the “ high falutin virtuous indignation bosh ho has been spurting lately”-—as the “ Star” with cultured vigour puts it. In the first place, the “ high falutin bosh” has never appeared at all in the “ Press,” but in the Globe ; and, in the second place, the “ Star’s” statements are so utterly untrue as to be completely valueless.