"ENTIRELY BASELESS"

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20012, 10 August 1939, Page 6

"ENTIRELY BASELESS"

~ RUMOUR OF JUDGESHIP MR, MASON'S DENIAL (Parliamentary Keporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. "The rumour is entirely ibaseless," said the Attorney-General, the Hon. H. G. R. Mason, to-day, when his attention was called to a statement putolished in Auckland yesterday that a rumour that he was to be appointed p. member of the Supreme Court Bench had been revived, aud was now being persistently circulated. "The question has never come into consideration or been thought of in any w'ay," he continued. "Some little time ago the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hen. M. J. Savage, in -reply to questioning, denied the rumour. That denial seemed to me sufficient to leave little room for further circulation of the story. "There has not been occasion to consider the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge, nor is it exnocled there will 'be such an occasion for many a year. No one is happier than 1 am in the reflection that thereis not occasion for the difficult responsibility of making such an appointment. "When rumours are persistent, there may .be a disposition to suppose they could not be so persistent unless there was a cause, and I may as well frankly state the cause, lest it be supposed that it has any relationship to truth. "Those who have invented and circulated the rumour are not unconscious of Nelson's saying, 'We all rise by deaths.' They understand that the promotion they would confer upon me means my death to politics and, in particular, they are eager to inherit a dead-man's shoes in the electorate of Auckland Suburbs."