AXES TO GRIND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 904, 13 October 1910, Page 4

AXES TO GRIND.

Every person is familiar with the citizen who is adept at making bullets for other people to fire, but few people understand the extent to which the person with an axe to grind desires to use the journalistic grindstone. Every newspaper office is frequently invaded by the man who has personal grievances against somebody or other, and who becomes angry when told that a newspaper cannot be made the vehicle for such warfare either from a legal or honourable point of view. On being definitely told that it is impossible that a paper can be used in order to disseminate a libel about Mr X. (whether the statement contained in the libel be true or false), the average person with a grievance demands to know “ what is the use of papers, anyhow ?” One of the uses of a paper is to refrain from giving space to malicious statements. Another use of a paper is to conduct a business that will keep its owners out of the police courts. The man with the axe to grind has never been known to approach a newspaper with a cheque for the cost of any possible action that may arise from the grinding of a personal axe, and there is not a paper in New Zealand that would willingly become involved in a case if the person with the axe paid twice the costs of an action. Most of the matters of the kind are of appalling littleness, ranging from a complaint, naming the owner of stray fowls, to allegations against a specified person for allowing a blackberry bush to grow. All the persons who are unwilling, or have not sufficient courage to take the result of their own venom, should paste the law of libel in their pocketbooks. But better than that, they should read all that has been written about the good old British virtue of fair-play. Papers are for the use of the people, and not weapons to be spitefully wielded for the persons.—New Plymouth News.