UR PERVERSE CONTEMPORARY

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10715, 21 September 1912, Page 4

UR PERVERSE CONTEMPORARY

If our evening contemporary is not absolutely lost to reason, he is so wilfully perverse that ho cannot understand the meaning of terms. He is, in fact, beyond redemption. In our issue of yesterday wo nailed him down to a wilful distortion of the truth ovejr the attitude of this paper in regard to the disestablishment of the District Higli School. We showed that his statement in regird to Ma- A. H. Vile, as a member of the Wellington Educational Board, was absolutely contrary to fact. And now, instead of making the amende honorable, instead of admitting that he allowed his pursuit of will-o'-the-wisps to get him into a hopeless bog, he talks of centipedes and other creeping things with which he seems familiar, and makes a shameless though impotent attempt to wriggle out of his unhappy position by equivocating and distorting the meaning of words. In our issue of August 23fxl, we stated that "to attempt to disestablish the District High School and to establish a High School proper, is to attempt the foolish," and" w'e'gnve sound and good reasons why a High School proper was ,uot required. Now our conI temporary, with unblushing effrontery, i and with a mendacity which is without parallel ln< the annals of New Zealand journalism, attempts to confuse a "High School proper" with an "Agricultural High School." Tf our contempcrary has not the brains or the capacity for discriminating between a "High School proper" and an "Agricultural High School/' we are sorry for him. The intelligent public is not likely to be misled by the equivocations, evasions and misrepresentations of one who appears to have no more knowledge of the education system of this country Than he has of the ethics of reputable journalism.