AXES TO GRIND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 149, 3 October 1910, Page 4

AXES TO GRIND.

Every person is familiar with the citizen who is adept at making bullets for other people to fire, but few people understand the extent to which the person with an axe to grind desires to use the journalistic grindstone. Every newspaper office is frequently invaded by the man who has personal grievances against somebody or other, and who becomes angry when told that a newspaper cannot be made the vehicle for such warfare either from a legal or honorable point of view. On being definitely told that it is impossible that a paper can be us«d in order to disseminate a libel about Mr. X. (whether the statement contained in the libel is true or faflse), the average person with a grievance demands to know "what is the use of papers anyhow?" One of the uses of a paper is to refrain from giving space to malicious statements. Another use of a paper is to conduct a business that will keep its owners out of the police courts. The man with the axe to grind has never been known to approach a newspaper with a cheque for the cost of any possible action that might arise from the grinding of a personal axe, and there is not a paper in New Zealand that would willingly become involved in a case if the person with the axe paid twice the costs of an action. Most of the matters of the kind are of appalling littleness, ranging from a complaint, namingr the owner of stray fowls, to allegations aigainst a specified person tor allowing a blackberry bush to ; grow. All the persons who are unwilling, or have not sufficient courage to take the result of their own venom, should paste the law of libel in their pocketftotfks:. But better than that, they should read all that has been written about the good old British virtue of fairplay. Papers are for the use of the people, and not weapons to be spitefully wielded for the persons.