VICTOR GRAYSON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 305, 21 December 1908, Page 2

VICTOR GRAYSON.

To Hie Editor. Siiy,-I am to be getting hit u.l round the compass tor my alleged anarchy. First the editor says, "It is hard to understand how an intelligent man like Mr. Roberts, etc." Then the man in the street buttonholes me and says, "You are wrong this time, Jim." Another says, "It's no use your going tor the editor." "How's that?" I ask. "Why, .because he always has the last word." That gave me pause. It is true, for it is on record that an editor once absent-mindedly wrote across his tailor's bill, "This correspondence must now cease," Hut though editors sometimes wear halos, on the whole they are human, and sometimes, like us, they see through a glass darkly. What is anarchy? Can it be perpetrated outside politics? I think so, for Mr. Camphell, of the City Temple, London, has had more theological thunderbolts heaved at him by the unco' guid than a' .. other man since Bradlaugh. Campil even likened the God of the first - .Itypter of Genesis to an old woman \vho didn't know her own mind. This was worse than anarchy: it was pure blasphemy. Fancy it happening a hundred years ago! Then, not long ago in New Plymouth a rev. gentleman declared from the pulpit that some of the Psalms were not fit to be read in pubib. .this latter anarchist was a verv cheerful personage and a good friend of mine. When I twitted him 0 n his heresy ho said, "My Mind is my own." So, after all, Grayson is in good company, and poor me need „ot be ashamed to champion a man who, like the Master he serves, loves the poor and downtrodden. .For 1 am not ashamed of anything I have said, and am willing to keep on saying that a man who is brave enough (o beard the House of Commons is no fool, and Snow-den's sneer that he (Grayson) was always absent wh.eu useful work was to be done has beeiTproved to be untrue. 'Twas <.ver thus, and will Ibe till time he no more. The old | Chinese..proverb. "Sincerity is the root of all virtue," is as applicable to-dav as it was when it was uttered thousaml'ol' years ago. All hail, then, to men r ' the type of Campbell and Grayson, who | in theology and politics dare affirm the hope that is i u them. If "Veritas" will give over being amazed and come out int<>_ the open 1 will be happy to break a friendly lance with him. This correspondence was started by Mr. Christopher and myself without fear or favor, and will he continued openly till the editor cries a halt.—l am, etc',

J, A. ROBERTS. [To save Sir. Roberts from wc had better make the halt iv repetition of an indefcnsibl is without purpose, witho . and a waste of space.—]>l.J