“PUSSYFOOT” JOHNSON’S ATTITUDE UNCHANGED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2928, 27 August 1925, Page 4

“PUSSYFOOT” JOHNSON’S ATTITUDE UNCHANGED.

EXPOSURE OF FALSE NEWS

It is a pity to have to spoil a good story; it would have been so delightful and so comforting to those who are opposed to prohibition if only “Pussyfoot” Johnson had really changed his mind. The special correspondent in San Francisco of the “Otago Daily Times” appears to have been responsible for an absolutely false statement with regard to “Pussyfoot” Johnston and this has been copied by several newspapers in the Dominion. The statement was to the effect that at Kansas City on June 10th “Pussyfoot” Johnson stated “to gaping newspaper men that a man has as much right to drink liquor as lie has to eat food which may be distasteful to others . . . . and be admitted that this was as it should be.” The Kansas City Star of June 10th contains on the front page an interview with Mr. Johnson and the headlines of the report are as follows: —“Whole World Going Dry.” Pussyfoot Johnson a visitor here, forecasts a Dusty Future. “John Barleycorn’s Back Is To The Wall Everywhere. Booze Is Going Just Like Slavery, li Has No Part In The Civilisation Of This Day.” In the whole of that interview that occupies more than a column of the front page there is not a single sentence of the stuff quoted by the San Francisco correspondent. But on June 25th, interviewed by “Public Opinion” at Westerville, Ohio, Mr. Johnson expressed bis views as follows: “My views have not changed. I am an individualist and always have been. I believe that a man has a. right to drink llcll lire or to eat rotten meat, provided lie wants it and can get it. But when a man puts rotten meat and intoxicating liquor in to the market for indiscriminate sale, be is doing something that affects society and society has a right to protect itself. If society has no right to protect itself, the result is anarchy, pure and simple. This may he a hardship on the alcohol addicts, hut society is under no obligations to provide facilities for men getting 1 heir booze, or rotten meat either. “There are a lot of men on earth who seem to think that the whole world revolves around their own stomachs. They place their appetite above the welfare of their country. But, thank God, these people are getting fewer and fewer. The bootleggers are busy killing each other off and that is all to the good. Let them keep it tip. “I believe in personal liberty right up to the hilt. That means that I have a personal right to fight against a great wrong.” Such grave distortion and misrepresentation of Mr. Johnsons statement is a thing unworthy »i any limn claiming to call himself a journalist. The object of it is, of course, perfectly clear. Mr Jointson has very many friends in New Zealand and it is to be hoped the widest publicity will he given to this contradiction of what amounts to a bass libel upon him.