BISHOP LISTON’S SPEECH.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1922, Page 5

BISHOP LISTON’S SPEECH.

REPLY TO THE MAYOR. NO EXPLANATION GIVEN. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. A copy of the letter sent to the Mayor has been handed to the Press by Dr. J. M. Liston, Roman Catholic coadjutor Bishop of Auckland. The Bishop says: “I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of Saturday. I notice your Worship issued your “protest” before I coqld possibly have received your letter. Seeing that your Worship had not the courtesy, not to say the sense of fair play, to wait my reply to your question before handing your condemnation of me to the Press of New Zealand, it seems to me quite unnecessary that you should have written to me at all, and it is certainly unnecessary that I should answer your question.” The Bishop, in a postscript, says: “As your Worship ha« made this matter ( public, I am handing this letter to the Press. VIEWS OF WELFARE LEAGUE. Wellington, March 22. The Welfare League has sent the following telegram to Mr. Gunson, Mayor of Auckland: “The New Zealand Welfare League expresses its emphatic disapproval of the anti-British and seditious speech delivered by Bishop Liston at Auckland and endorses your action in the matter. Such a speech can only tend to engender bitterness and strife among our people and encourage those •whose efforts are directed at the destruction of the Empire.”