LETTERS TO THE PAPER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 354, 5 April 1946, Page 5

LETTERS TO THE PAPER

Sir,-Like D.F.T., I am occasionally moved to write a letter to the paper and then have prayed that it will not be printed. I have for some time been cole lecting an anthology of newspaper correspondence with the idea of writing an article on the subject; but, having come to the conclusion that to be a successful writer of light articles one must not be too tied down by facts, I yield up some of my anthology for the comfort of D.F.T. In the Illustrated London News was a weekly column entitled "Nothing in the Papers." The author was obviously chafing at the necessity of writing paragraphs on Home interests when there was a perfectly good war going on. So we correspondents needn’t be too hurt by his remarks. He writes: It occurs to me that people who write to the papers (and what people who write for the papers think of the others need not be set down here) will rightly consider that they have had a bad time lately, The Autumn, during which the amateurs are accustomed ta refresh the journals with lucubrations which caused an uncivil critic to name that time "The Silly Season,’’ was entirely devoted to war and the "outsiders" were cruelly kept outside. The war holds on, the columns of the journals are still proof against volunteers, and the last hopes of the latter are now finished off, for the Gazette of Tuesday fixed October 9 for the meeting of Parliament. Between the hea correspondents and the reports, there will be no sort of chance for the people who write "without being obliged’-may one add ‘without obliging? Why do they not set up a paper of their own and write to one another? The other extract was written by Walter Besant in 1892: "If, for instance, we now want to know what the great mass of respectable people think papers, but the student. of London" opinions in the year 1892 can best learn them from the daily correspondence of two London papers.’ Besant goes on to discuss correspondence in an 18th Century paper: Ey We can here read the very Adsion, ot they in Tom Brown can be found the the citizen. But it is there. These two quotations have filled too much space, so I shall close by thank. ing D.F.T. for another contribution to my anthology. I, too, ponder on the mystery of the docking of dates from letters to The Listener.

SECRETAN

JONES

(Dunedin).