INDIAN EDITORS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8917, 10 September 1907, Page 4

INDIAN EDITORS.

Some instructive experiences of the Indian native Press are contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette by an ex-Deputy Commissioner. Ho points out that the printed word has immense weight with natives, and to be abused in print is for a native very bitter indeed. He had once a Mussulman clerk who was greatly upset by the virulent articles about him in a native newspaper, and finally declared that he could stand it no" longer. Now the main business of the editor of the sheet was tc supply the Deputy Commissioner with blank forms for summoning witnesses and other purposes; journalism was merely a hobby. When he brought his next supply of forms along the Deputy Commissioner told him he must choose between libelling the clerk or his contract with the office. Prom that time forth the assistant’s affairs were never mentioned. Some years afterwards this same paper—under a new editor — took to publishing biting criticisms of the Deputy Commissioner. The editor went bnkrupat, and, starving, went for assistance to the man he had abused. As he was a man of ability, the Commissioner made him a copyist. When it came to going into camp, the ex-editor followed his chief, as one of the humblest of his “bullock bandies.’’ One day the Commissioner had occasion to rebuke him in public, and that evening ' the head man of the district asked the Englishman whether this servant was not formerly the editor of the paper. When told that this was so, great was his surprise. “But, Sahib, wo all believed that the editor of that newspaper was at least equal to the Commissioner, and he used to write such things about your Honour. We thought he must be a man of groat power and wealth to be allowed to write as he did, not once or twice, but every week; we expected to see a very great man indeed, but he came to the village with the clerk of the court’s cook, and the pots and pans, and did not dare to come even to my office.” A further explanation left the old man still rather puzzled. He had believed that all printed matter must be true, and the magnanimity of the Englishman under such circumstances was evidently something which he could not understand. It would be a good thing if more native editors went bankrupt and took humble service in the train of the hated English.