It is a strange thing in this country with so many rivers flowing into the sea right round the island, as soon as the rains cease there is a drought and there are thousands affected with no possibility of getting anything out of what they have cultivated, be it rice or vegetables. And while the rains last there are a number of places that get inundated with roads impassable and people displaced from their abodes.
If one recalls the history of this blessed isle it was King Parakramabahu the Great who said that not a drop of water should be allowed to go into the sea without being made use of. That was the era when Sri Lanka exported rice to other neighbouring countries. How did they do this? They had neither sophisticated equipment nor machines that are available now. They also did not have the help of foreign qualified experts. But with whatever skills they had they were able to achieve what they wanted. All this was done by conserving the water from the seasonal rains the islan
(With Contempt of Court cases making news recently, we publish today an article written by E.C.B. Wijeyesinghe, a famous journalist of yesteryear on the Contempt of Court case against the Editor of the Daily News in the nineteen thirties)
One of the occupational hazards of the editor of a newspaper is to suffer for other people’s sins. There is, of course, a sacred precedent for this kind of undeserved torture: but you cannot put up that plea in mitigation of the punishment when you stand face to face with the majesty of the law. In case you are eager to know what I am driving at, let me say at once that this is just a preamble to a story about an illustrious editor of the Ceylon Daily News who escaped by the skin of his teeth from spending a holiday in the Welikade Prison.