Correspondence.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43082, 16 April 1907, Page 2

Correspondence.

Ve do not hoi d ourselves responsible for the opinions expressed by our correspondents.

[To the Editor.]

Sir, —The spectacle of “ Satan reproving sin,” fumibhed by your morning contemporary’s article denouncing the recent church bazaar, might afford entertainment to a few, but will, I think, be viewed with contempt by the great majority of your readers. It is an old established practise for visitors to a bazaar to put into their purses what money they feel they can afford to donate to the object for which the venture has been organised. If they look to the management to provide them in return with some amusement and harmless excitement are they to be denounced as gamblers? I never heard anything so absolutely childish and ridiculous as the contention that in hazarding a guess at the number of beads on a doll’s necklace, men, young and old, were actuated by a feverish desire to become the possessors of the said dolls; or that young girls vied with each other in computing the numbers of beans iu a bottle because of covetous designs upon a suit of pyjamas or a fat turkey. Viewed with such distorted mental vision what monsters of iniquity our bowlers must appear, engaging in competitions, not, as we in our blind ignorance suppose, for the purpose of enjoying a hearty recreatiqn and harmless excitement, but in the hope of gaining a trophy to the everlasting impoverishment of their competitors. Your contemporary claims an inability to distinguish between the man who risks money (in many cases not his own) on our totalisator, and the lady who guesses the name of a doll. Similarly there are people who cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood ; between that which is theirs and that which is their neighbours, just as there are people who cannot see that the freehold has ruined the dairying industry, or that the Arbitration Court has abolished strikes. With many of your contemporary’s conclude ing remarks I entirely concur. I agree that the Church should avoid not only evil, but “all appearances of evil,” while at the same time it pursues its high gurpose unmindful of the giles of those ttle minds that are ever on the alert to impute evil when none exists, and at the same time I shall await with interest your contemporary’s uufolding of that more worthy way of raising money foreshadowed in the article, feeling assured that it will receive all the support it I may deserve. —I am, etc., Aroha.

[To the Editor,]

Sir, —It is generally understood that the present Borough Councillors intend to call a meeting to confirm their resolution with reference to raising a loan of say £3,000 to erect a traffic bridge across the Waihou River at Kenrick Street. Now Sir, as a rate-payer I must say that it shows very bad taste on their part to take such an important step in the dying moments of their term of office. I hope that my information is not correct, as I think that such a matter should be left to the ingoing councillors to attend to. Thanking you for giving publicity to this. —I am etc.,

Ratepayer