Mr. Greenwood?
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
How’S Your Shorthand,
OPEN LETTER TO MR. ANTHONY GREENWOOD, SECRETARY
Of State For The Colonies, London
Dear Mr. Greenwood, How is your knowledge of Pitman’s shorthand, particularly the advanced variety?
I ask this question because (although my name was not men tioned), you have accused me, through the Fiji Colonial Secretary, Mr.
P. D. Macdonald, of having misreported certain remarks made by Fiji’s Governor, Sir Derek Jakeway, at a Press conference in Sydney in February.
A letter to this effect from Mr. Macdonald, addressed to Mr. C.
A. Patel, secretary-general of the Indian Federation Party in Fiji, has been given wide publicity in the Colony.
The letter said you were “satisfied” that Sir Derek had been “mis reported in his comments on the question of self-government in Fiji. . ”
As I am the reporter who you say misreported Sir Derek, and as I have already said in print (PIM, March, p. 10) that Sir Derek was NOT misreported, your statement vexes me, to say the least!
No doubt you are a just man, so I am curious to know how you satisfied yourself that I did, in fact, misreport Sir Derek. You were not at the Sydney Press conference yourself; no other journalist present reported Sir Derek’s remarks on the topic in dispute; and no one from your office has asked me to produce the notes I took at the time.
Would you like jo see them? Here they are.
Yours, etc.
Robert Langdon
Assistant Editor, Pacific Islands Monthly, Sydney.
The notes read: "external affairs and the Queen continuing to give assent to legislation. The Indians do not want self-government because they know that this would immediately create racial strife." The notes thus show that Sir Derek DID use the word "self-government" where he claimed he had said "indepen dence"—the tell-tale shorthand outlines being the small circle surmounting a horizontal stroke joined to a downward curve in the third line. (Note: In writing racial, I made a mistake and put "ray-shn-l" rather than "ray-shl". Realising my error, I crossed it out and wrote it in longhand. I hope this was all right, Mr. Greenwood!)