SAMOA COMMISSION

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 6

SAMOA COMMISSION

PRIME MINISTER’S REPLY "AH AMAZING PBOHOUMCEMEMT ” v ' Messrs Findlay, lloggard, Cousins, and Wright’s rejoinder to Mr Coates’s last letter of reply reads: —

i “Your reply to our last letter is an amazing pronouncement, violating, as it does, tho fundamental principles of British liberty. Every subject of His Majesty has the sight to petition Parliament and have that petition heard and reported on. The Samoans petitioned and set out their grievances. That petition was presented to tho House and referred to a joint committee of both Houses appointed by the Government on party lines. The com--1 mittee sat and excluded the Press, and j thereby made it penal to reveal the evidence given. The petitioners desired the committee to hear witnesses from Samoa, but after Mr Nelson’s evidence was given, and bo was cross-examined , by counsel for the Crown and by cerI tain menders of the committee for no ■ less than “five days, and after you had '"announced in the House that, a Royai i Commission had been applied for, not 1 by the, petitioners, but by the Adminisj trator, and it would therefore be set up, and after Mr Nelson’s evidence I was concluded, the committee notified the petitioners that no further evidence would bo heard. Is that consistent with a British subject’s fundamental right to have bis petition heard?” i j GIVING UP THEIR POSITIONS tSFECIiL TO IKE * SrAE.’J I ' i I AUCKLAND, September 10. Mr Nelson has received a radio from Samoa stating that many Samoan native officials are giving up their posi--1 tions to join the Maui (Samoan move--1 moot). “If this goes on,” he says, 1 “there will be nobody left to assist the i Government in Samoa.”