THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1875.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1999, 1 June 1875, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1875.

TnE Daily Southern Cross and New Zealand Herald are just now illustrating the wisdom of tbe old saying, " set a thief to catch a thief." The Cross has made a distinct charge of literary piracy against the Herald, and the latter journal ;has retaliated, making out a very good case —until explained, which the Cross will no doubt do." If half the hard things said by one of the other be true, both journals deserve fo be exposed. The Cross accused the Herald of copying from the New Zealand Times, while admitting itß indebtedness to the Gazette, certain figures, and the columns of small type in juxtaposition were apparently a sufficient justification for the Cross's charges. But the Herald retaliated, and placed in parallel columns extracts from the New York Herald and the Cross, being comments on the Arnim case, which suggest wholesale cribbing on the part of the Cross, or—well, a peculiar coincidence of two writers beiDg struck with very similar ideas. The result is a wordy warfare which is very interesting to readers, but which does not .reflect creditably on the conduct of either Cross or Herald, and cannot but result in weakening whatever influence these journals may exercise; and as both aspire to be leading journals, the result of the literary strife will be watched with a great deal of interoat by other papers with less ambitious pretensions. Perhaps the end will be an improvement in both papers, and a little more care in extracting from their contemporaries. When rogues fall out honest men get their own; if these two leading morning journals remember this they will bo more discreet in future, and their readers will be troubled with less personalities—the editors having before their eyes the recollection that any attempt at impudent appropriation /will be discovered and exposed. At present, however, they are exposing themselves in |a ludicrous manner; arid in aj modified degree imitating the tactics of the Eatansville rival editors rendered famous by Dickens. .