A GREAT AMERICAN ORATOR.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 180, 20 March 1902, Page 3

A GREAT AMERICAN ORATOR.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —ln reference to “ Johnny Cannuck’s ” letter in your issue of the 15th inst., under the heading “ A Great American Orator,” allow me to say that the writer of this has no brief to defend Mr Woolley or his opinions of New Zealand’s or Australia’s loyalty to the Mother Country. We have far stronger language in the Anti-British line nearer home than anything in this harmless quotation. But the assertion that the paragraph in question appeared in “The New York Voice of Chicago ” is, to say the least, ambiguous, and tends to show that “Johnny Cannuck’s” residence " Toronto ” is fictitious as his newspaper names. It is better known in Toronto than in antipodean New Zealand, that “The Voice” of New York has no connection with Mr Woolley or his paper “ The New Voice ” of Chicago.—Yours,Water Cuke.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In an article in .Saturday’s issue under the above heading you embody a letter making some very qneer statements in regard to Mr J. G. Woolley. The said letter bears what is plainly an assumed name, and is cut from some Canadian paper. The context being absent, the assertions should be received with caution. You say it would be interesting to obtain some more titbits from Mr Woolley’s experiences. I there fore take the liberty of enclosing a couple of pars, from *‘ Notes and Comments ” in the Lyttelton Times of the 26th ult., giving some idea of the way in which Mr Woolley appears to have written of this colony.—l am, etc., Eruera.

[extract. ] Mr J. G. Woolley has been making Rome characteristically shrewd observations on New Zealand and New Zealandors. He complains that the colonial speech is solid and stiff compared with the “flexible and effervescent ’’English of the Americans. In fact, it is like New Zealand locks, excellent for strength and durability—but he..vy< He found prices ■ome 25 per cent higher than in America, and business generally slow--" full of the suggestion of everlasting life.” The cities, he says, are not. ready for business b'fore niue o’c’ock, and merchants

s cm imlillferent whether they sell or n >t. Other travellers have made similar obiervations. New Zealand, fin --v, B like the Mother C m orv The bul/nss men take it for granted that what u man wants ho will buy. The America -s on the hi li t hand, aim at soldin lc a man something, whether he wants it or not.

Mr Wooley makes generous, kmdly ob-G'-vaiions upon rol diial insiiUi ionsI'ne railroads, he sam, are well in t mged and the officials ate anxious to pleisc travellers. The stand irds of the public schools are very high, anel the people are openminded and fond of public meetings and di icus.dona. As for politics, there is, declares Mr Woolley practically only one party, though the Conservative Party does exist somewhat feebly, and some men are still influenced by party ties and prejudice". For all that bn pays the colony the compliment of saying that ‘the peop'e actually rule ’ and that in Parliament every interest in the community has representation and a chance to be heard. There is a kind of sturdy truth about all this that justifies ono in belieying that what Mr Woolley says about other countries and other peoples is equally free from exaggeration.