Correspondence

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 28 January 1916, Page 3

Correspondence

WHILE it is our endeavour to give correspondents every facility for the free expression of their opinion, it should be borne in mind that the views expressed do not, necessarily, reflect the opinions of the Editor.

(TO THE EDITOR.)

Dear Sir, —I Crave a little spacefill which to reply to Mr Melling and his new champion. I promise not to be more verbose than I can help and to say what I have to say in the least possible space.

I was much disappointed in the replies to my letter, expecting at least that an attempt would have been made to refute what I had to say. As neither correspondent attempted to do this, I take it they both admit that my contention viz : the opponents of compulsion —the Labourites —■ are the champion compulsionists of the world, and live, as unionists, on compulsion, is a sound one.

I must confess that I fail to grasp the whole meaning of the letter from “ One of the 34,000 ” However, I gather that he goes further than I do, for, whereas I said that a few of the importations from the Old Country suffered from mental obliquities, he says most do. This is surely a canard. In the early part of his letter he says that the highest ideals are not reached by following the multitude. In the latter part, he says the minority ought always to submit or take the consequences. This appears to me to be a paradox, but no doubt it will be quite clear to “ One of the 34,000.”

Then he talks about following a multitude which is obscured in the shadow of ignorance. If it is obscured, it will take some following, but this again will be easy for “One of the 34000.” The rest of his letter appears to be a collection of quotations and he is evidently not good at quoting.

Mr Melling pays me the compliment of saying that I am clever, and I am extremely grateful for the compliment. He guesses that I have had connection with some union or other. He is a poor guesser. He guesses also that I am one of the eligibles, and again he misses the mark. If his shooting during his term of service, was as bad as his guessing, the army would lose nothing by his leaving it. He says also that all members of a union have an equal voice and voKpj There arb a lot of unionists who will not believe it

He objects to me hiding my identity under a nom-de-plume, and says that in doing so, I am un-British.

I would point out that to-day, there are hundreds of thousands of Britishers hiding themselves in trenches from savage foes, and are not considered to be cowardly or un-British. Possibly Mr Melling will see the analogy. He appears to be somewhat astray, too, in his whitebait theory. I have always understood that the idea in drawing a red herring across the scent, is not to hide it by the herring’s bulk, but to confuse it by the smell of the herring, so that a whitebait would hardly do for a comparison.

Mr Melling also appears to think that a ballot should be taken before war is undertaken. Just fancy the position we would be in, if we put all the machinery in motion for taking a ballot with the German guns throwing 17in. shells into the polling booths. This is the kind of counsel the German Socialists have been handing out to British Trades Unionists for years, and even yet the Britisher seems to be willing to swallow it.

As I did not write about the general tone of Mr Mailing's letter in my first, but confined myself to the one point, it is not necessary for me to traverse any pait of his last letter which had no direct reference to myself. The balance of his letter is not likely to do any harm, and is not calculated to do any good, so can safely be put to one side. I am, etc. “ Not One of the 34,000.”