AN AFFRONT TO LOYALTY.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 December 1922, Page 2

AN AFFRONT TO LOYALTY.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,-r-In to-day’s mail I received certain pamphlets, accompanied by a circular signed by one Ira J. Bridger, .and touting for votes for one Oswald Hawken, who, it stated, cpuld be depended on to obey the whipcrack of the Protestant Political Association of which Mr. 'Bridger Is apparently one of the beads. With a few cheap insults hurled at the Catholic Church, these pamphlets contained the imputation that I, being a member of that church, must in consequence be disloyal to the Empire. The political aspect of the matter interests mo not at all, but the posting of this stuff to me I take as an unwarranted attack on my loyalty. I served four years with the N.Z.E.F., and I resent being called disloyal by persons who did not serve four seconds. Messrs. Hawken, Bridger and others of their class may have had very good reasons for not enlisting—the thickness (or thinness) of tlie army issue socks may not have influenced (hem at all, but that does not give them the right, to question tlie loyalty, even for political purposes, of the many thousand soldiers who fought, or insult the memory of those who died. I object to this claptrap about “Empire” from persons whose only idea of helping the Empire when she had her back to the wall was by waving Union Jacks (made in Japan), and slandering the dead relatives of men who were fighting —I am, etc., W. J. WRIGHT. Rahotu, December 4.