MR SCRIMGEOUR REPLIES

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23976, 17 June 1943, Page 4

MR SCRIMGEOUR REPLIES

TWO MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS “FACTS NOT ANSWERED” (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 16. The only fresh development in the Scrimgeour incident to-day was the issue of a statement by Mr Scrimgeour in reply to the statements of the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) and the Minister in charge of Broadcasting (the Hon. D. Wilson). K ln his reply, the Minister of Broadcasting refers to my statement as being made for the purpose of giving reasons why I should Jiot be mobilised, and the Pi’ime Minister refers to the ‘explanations for desiring not to give military service,’ " said Mr Scrimgeour, “Such expressions are as unworthy as they are unwarranted.” Mr Scrimgeour recalled a passage in his previous statement in which he said he would be happy to become a soldier, and also said he had made application to join the Air Force if the authorities so desired. Mr Scrimgeour says his case is that he is being discriminated against and railroaded, not by Army officers, but by others, and he sets out categorically in seven paragraphs the facts which, he says, were not answered in either Ministerial statement. Instead of answering these, says Mr Scrimgeour, the Government has' published certain correspondence in which four leaders of the Industrial Labour Movement set out their joint version of certain discussions which took place when .they were acting as negotiators for the Government at the time of his suspension. These discussions were as irrelevant to his case of discrimination and victimisation as was “the Minister of Broadcasting’s unfounded complaint that my undertaking to these four gentlemen precluded me from making a public disclosure of facts which the public are entitled to know.’’ Mr Scrimgeour says there are three side issues raised by the Minister of Broadcasting, on which he makes the following comment. “(1) The Minister did not tell me in November that no appeal would be made. “(2) I did not recommend the Minister to appoint as acting-controller a grade 1 man in my department who had been appealed for. On the contrary I opposed the appointment for certain departmental reasons, and told the Minister he must make it on his own responsibility, “(3) In accordance with my duty as a departmental head, I recommended appeals for grade 1 balloted men now retained in my department. My recommendations were all approved by the Public Service Appeals Advisory Committee. The appeals were made by the Director of National Service, not myself.” TREATMENT OF MR SCRIMGEOUR RAILWAYMEN’S PROTEST The following resolution was carried at a recent meeting of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants at Addington:— “That this meeting emphatically protest to the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) against the unfair discrimination and victimisation of Mr Scrimgeour. In the matter of appeals for exemption from service in the armed forces, we urge the Government to extend the same consideration to the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting as the humble railway servant."

WAR BOOKS INSIDE GERMANY Dr. W. W. Schutz, the author of German Home Front (Gollancz, 312 dd iO/fl net) with Dr. B. de Sevin as a collaborate, has assembled from German official statements, the German press, neutral sources, etc., an elaborate account of conditions in Germany and particularly of those which illustrate the difficulties of the Nazi regime and the strength and character of opposition to it. A leading article in The Press” yesterday was in part based on evidence in this book. U.S.A. at War Prom the fall of France to Pearl Harbour, How War Came to America (Allen and Unwin. 283 pp. 12/6 net), by Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, is an admirable piece of current historical writing, unsensational but dramatic, copiously detailed but orderly, and in several respects—notably on the problem of Anglo-American relations with Vichy and on American policy towards Japan—newly illuminating. This last merit is no doubt due to the authors’ having ‘‘searched the still fresh recollections of the men who directed American policy in the most perilous and difficult year and a hall since Appomatox.”