PAMPHLETS OF PROTEST

Evening Star, Issue 23680, 13 September 1940, Page 2

PAMPHLETS OF PROTEST

DEPORTATION Of COMMUNIST CHARGE AGAINST BARBER [Pek United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, September 12. A charge of being iu possession on August 31 of 127 copies of a pamphlet with a view to facilitating the publication of a subversive statement was made in court to-day against James Kelman, aged 37, a barber, employed at the railway station. The pamphlet contained an attack on three Ministers of the Crown in connection with the deportation of a Communist. The magistrate, Mr J. L. Stout, reserved his decision. Senior-detective Doyle said that, as the result of complaints received, a detective interviewed the accused, who was the sole occupier of a “ bach ” at the back of a house. There the detective found a fairly extensive collection of hooks from the Left Book Club. The accused told the detective that he was a member of the Esperanto Society, but the detective did not find literature of the kind the police were seeking. A suit case was found to contain Esperanto pamphlets which were the subject of the charge. The accused expressed great amazement at these, saying ho had never seen them hfeore. They were not in the suitcase when he looked in it a few days before. In the breast pocket of a coat there was a letter from the organiser of the Wellington branch of the Communist Party. With reference to this the accused said: “That is a different matter. 1 That’s a different story.’’ . Mr Doyle indicated that similar pamphlets had been posted throughout the city. Each pamphlet stated that it was issued by the National Committee of the. Peace and Anti-conscription Council. The police had stopped mootings of that body, and on the surface itliad been defunct so far as the police knew. Defending counsel said that the accused, with several hundred others who attended a meeting of the Peace and Anti-conscription Council at the Trades Hall, signed on as a member. The members’were asked to distribute notices of meetings, and such notices were dumped regularly in the accused’s room, the door of which was always unlocked. He had ro reason to believe that tlmre was anything in the room when the i police searched it.