DEAN POWER AND POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 157, 9 December 1914, Page 3

DEAN POWER AND POLITICS.

To the Editor. Sir—A few days ago I suggested that it would be well to publish any remarks which Dean Power may have felt impelled to make in condemnation of the lawless action of the mob at the time of the great waterside strike. It is ,ip parent, however, tljat your failure to fall in with this suggestion is not your fault, but rather your misfortune. For since writing on this matter, I have made independent inquiries, and have been unable to discover any evidence that the worthy 'Dean had ever moved in the direction X indicate, and had imagined, Indeed, one of the texts on which the reverend gentleman based his remarks, viz., "The masterly inactivity of the Premier who contents himself with suggesting an arbitrator, and who, when his suggestion is refused, looks calmly on while the farmers and working men are at each other's throats is the scandal of the universe,'' sufficiently corroborates my conclusions, and also rather conflicts with his assurance published in the News last week that for 27 years he had not interfered in politics beyond voting conscientiously and advis | ing his hearers to do likewise. It also | reveals the fact that his antipathy to the Premier is not of recent date, and it is most distressing to me to find that the Dean's censorious rebuke of the Hon. Mr. Massey's offence—if if be an offenci} jto answer a fool according to his folly was prompted, not as I erroneously be lieved by a lofty conception of ethics, but by a narrow and long-standing prejudice of the most bitter type. Tt is, perhaps, only natural that Dean Power, with just that faint touch, of vanity which everv man who counts for anything at all is more or less endowed, should, desire to be acquainted with the, identity of one who had written in such eulogistic terms, and had I been to continue in the same strain nothing i would give me greater pleasure than to 1 satisfy his curiosity, but being only a very humble member of society, I dare not incur the risk of the dean's displeasure. In conclusion, let me regretfully say that my original conception of the reverend dean as a spiritual mentor whose chivalrtnis nature led him to sometimes overstep the bounds which custom usually sets as the legitimate sphere, of priestly indner.ee has vanished, my illusion is dispelled, and the idol which I enthusiastically had set on so high a pedestal is fallen and shattered, disclosing to public view its feet of clay. —I am, etc., A. YEOMAN.