From the Memory Hole, VI

Yes, Memory Hole takes requests:

WE MUST CONFUTE OUR TRADUCERS

St. John’s Evening Telegram
June 19, 1933

The Salt Codfish Bill having passed Committee stage in the Legislative Council, and the honourable members having expressed themselves in accord with the principles of the measure, with its signature by His Excellency the Governor, Newfoundland will have at last taken the necessary legislative steps to reorganize and, it is to be hoped to revive its greatest industry.

Legislative enactments of this nature are of little value, however, unless all concerned cooperate wholeheartedly in carrying out the regulations. Their whole purpose can be defeated it the public chooses to attempt to evade them and if there is any weakness on the part of those whose duty it is to enforce them. The laxity with which the Game laws are observed and the half-hearted manner in which the regulations have been enforced afford only too convincing evidence of the fact that a legislative measure which is not effectively implemented does nothing more than to encourage disregard of authority.

In an article conspicuously displayed in the Toronto Saturday Night of June 10th, the writer, who is described in the headnote as “an able scientist and economist who is well acquainted with conditions,” and who signs himself “Islander,” has little to say to the credit of Newfoundland or its people. He expresses the opinion that the natural resources upon the development of which the islanders rely for economic recovery are chimeras. No one, says the writer, “has as yet deliberately pricked the bubble of delusion and shown the people the true limitations of their inheritance.” Speaking of the country’s administration, he declares that Newfoundland has never been wisely governed, and that “every inch of progress has been accompanied by acts of either gross incompetence or downright fraud.” The people are accused to have been as busy as their representatives in looting the Treasury. Throughout the whole article, there is little to suggest that Newfoundland or the people had any redeeming virtues and there was little hope of further progress or prosperity.

By a coincidence, the Toronto Financial Post publishes on the same date a Newfoundland Supplement in which are described the many steps taken by the people of the Dominion to overcome the difficulties by which they have been beset, and writers who are certainly not less familiar with conditions than the Saturday Night contributor substantially support their claim regarding the possibilities of further industrial development and the enterprise of the people by facts and figures, instead of by dealing in generalities. The Telegram believes that the Financial Post’s Supplement supplies an effective rebuttal to the misleading and discourteous account of conditions published in the Toronto Saturday Night, which not for the first time has lent its columns to articles of a similar derogatory nature regarding Newfoundland affairs. The whole account is so entirely out of keeping with the tone of courtesy and neighbourliness displayed by the Canadian press generally. that it can only be inferred that Saturday Night, either by accident or for some unaccountable reason has permitted a writer with some grudge against the Dominion to avail of its pages to vent his spleen upon us.

The matter is only referred to in order to emphasise the need that exists for all sections of the population vigorously and earnestly to devote themselves to the country’s interests, for it is imperative at this time in particular that the citizens of Newfoundland should convince the world that by their own efforts they am determined to “see it through,” and that they have the utmost confidence in their country and in their own qualities to surmount the difficulties which it has encountered.