LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. HANDEL BOOTH AND SIR JOHN RAMSDEN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In your current issue you use the words "Mr. Booth's attack on Sir John Ramsden fathered by the Daily News." You owe me an instant apology. I have made no attack, and my letter to Mr. Bonar Law published weeks ago in the press stated that the article did not emanate from me and I only saw it many days after publication. As a result of my action on the Pontefract Rural Council, an agreement from Sir John's solicitors was refused signature and the wells remain public property. My defence of the drinking-water supplies of this village was brought to a successful issue without my using a disparaging word of the lord of the manor. 1 suppose this libel on me suits some party end, and Tory papers will be repeating it for years to come—like the lie about the Attorney-General getting a favour from his brother.—I am, [We regret to have made the misstatement of fact of which Mr. Handel Booth complains. We owe him an apology, and we make it, and as amply as he can demand We were not aware that he had written a letter to Mr. Bonar Law, and are unable to find "it now, as he does not give any reference. It remains to point out how we were misled into thinking that Mr. Booth was in the last resort responsible for the attack on Sir John Ramsden. In the course of the Times report of the trial of Banisclen v. The Daily News (March 18th, 1913), the following passage is to be found in Mr. F. E. Smith's opening speech :—
" In the issue of the Daily News for October 22, 1912, Sir W. F. Barrett wrote denying the truth of the charges contained in the article, and on the following day a letter appeared in the paper signed Your Special Correspondent,' saying that the writer had the authority of Mr. Handel Booth, M.P., a prominent resident of Broth erton, for saying that no inaccuracies were to be found in what he had written."
Are we to understand Mr. Handel Booth to mean that the statement of " Your Special Correspondent " in the Daily News was an invention ? If not, what exactly does Mr.
Handel Booth mean ? We should he glad to hear from Mr. Booth on this point.—En. Spectator.]
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