POLITICAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1922, Page 6

POLITICAL.

MR. SMITH’S SPEECH. (To the Editor.) Sir, —The correspondence concerning Mr. S. G. Smith’s alleged shortcomings is very dreary. There is so much of a sameness about it that one might be pardoned for thinking that most of the letters emanate from one source, different names being used to give variety to the piffle. It is dreary; there is not nearly the interest in reading it as in reading some of your back files, say that of January 31, 1914, concerning an assault case ventilated in Inglewood. There is very little to make such a fuss about. The interjections that caused Mr. Smith to retaliate were both coarse and untrue. He has taken the manly part of expressing his regret for his indiscretion, and surely that is sufficient. Only one in his second childhood, or a nagging old woman, would trouble about it any longer. Even the Right Hon. the Premier has been indiscreet under similar circumstances, notablv after the by-election fox Welling-

ton North in 1917, only on that occasion the Premier did not say anything or what he said could not lie heard, so he resorted to a well-known sign. ’ As to the fairness of the treatment of Mr. Smith by a certain local journal, it would appear to a casual observer that it was distinctly unfair. One’s opinion is, I suppose, guided by one's color. I do not mean tile pigmentation of one’s skin, or the color of one’s hair, natural or otherwise, but political color. People of strong political bias, editors included, lose their sense of proportion during an election campaign and write things that under normal conditions they would not di earn of doino-.—l am etc., r N. R. COE. [We may explain that the letters referred to have come from different quarters, not from the one source, as concluded by our correspondent.—Ed.]