HAWERA SCHOOL COMMITTEE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9462, 3 June 1909, Page 5

HAWERA SCHOOL COMMITTEE.

LETTER PROM FATHER

POWER

i (Special to Advocate.) Hawera, June 2

The Press Association telegram from Hawera, by the absolute suppression of the essential truth, dues an injustice to the Catholic body of this district. The true facts are these: —Mr O’Dea, M.A., LL.B., an ex-sohoolmaster, a barrister, and a Catholic, opposes Mr Dixon, a Methodist lay reader, and the sitting member of the Wanganui Education Board. Instead of circularising the district, as the wire states, a personal friend and old school fellow and a solicitor, writes bespeaking interest to sixteen non-Oatholio acquaintances and five Catholics. No other Catholic priest or layman knew at this time of Mr O’Dera’s candidature. Mr Dixon denounces it as a Catholic movement on behalf of Mr O’Dea, and publishes a letter of an anonymous correspondent, giving warning of an organised attack hy the Catholics on the education system. The press was written to deprecating the hysteria and sectarian bgiotry generally accompanying the elections here, and showing that there were no grounds for the charge against thje Catholics. Next day Mr Dixon withdrew ; the charge, and this withdrawal the Press Association agent, a local editor, who has been one-sided throughout, has suppressed. In the subsequent history of the campaign there is no evidence to show that the Catholics made it a party question. The priests alone amongst the local clergy kept severely out of the fight. They reserved their pulpits for the Gospel, and were not present on Monday night at the most disgraceful wrangle ever witnessed here. Another item kept back is that one Candidate who was proposed for the chair at the householders’ meeting would not yield to an ex-member of Parliament, who was nominated as an independent, on the ground that his casting vote might be necessary. This wrangle lasted two hours, dnriug which a large body of householders retired in disgust, leaving victory with the party that had stirred up blind bigotry. Even .the Press Association agent admits that 200 left the meeting.. FATHER POWER.

[The above refers to a Press Association message from Hawera. published in our yesterday’s issue]