THE DIGGER'S LETTER BOX.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 28, 24 September 1920, Page 6

THE DIGGER'S LETTER BOX.

JOHN.

(Held over from last week.)

A BEPLY. (To the . Editor.) Jacques. — Thanks for your courteous reply. It is so refreshing to take part in a newspaper discussion with one who does not use unpleasant personal insinuations which are so frequeortly used in place of arguments, that I cannot miss the opportunity of marking my appreciation. Neither would I seek to defend McCabe, were he guilty of calling his opponents fools and liars. Of course you only say he assumes that, and you assume that he assumes and you give as a reason that in referring to spiritualism he said: "It was born of a fraud, it was cradled in fraud, it was nutured in fraud. It is based today to an alarming extent on fraudulent performances. You left the words underlined out, which makes a difference in the construction that may be placed on it, and I still think that your assumption is unwarranted. I also think that McCabe supported the assertion with ample evidence to prove it. He has given the record of medium after medium exposed and convicted of fraud which justifi.es his reference to it as "unparalleled trickery." Mediums may he called the high priests of spiritualism and when frau3 TTas been proved so often, what are we to call it, my dear Jacques, but fraud? It seems to me, however, that it- is drawing the long bow to eonclude that because he calls it fraud, he assumes that all those who at tribute ever so little of the psychical phenoine'na produced hy medium to other influences than fraud are therefore fools or liars. We are often deceived by professional conjurers and others^ are we therefore fools? I am afraid very few of us will escape the imputation if this is so. However, I am not going to labour the poiht, 1 have no brief for McCabe, and it was only my sense of fair play which indueed me to write, and I am quite' satisfied to leave the question to the judgment of those interested ih our little passage at arms. I will close with one more passage from McCabe's last speech in the debate which ig inconsistent with your conclusion. He said : "I will respect any man or any .woman, no matter what their conclusions may be, if they have used their own personality, their own mind and their own judgment, righteously and conscientiously. I do not care what conclusions they come

to." — I am, etc.,