MR HOLLAND’S SPEECH

Hokitika Guardian, 13 November 1928, Page 5

MR HOLLAND’S SPEECH

(Bv Telegraph—Press Association)

WESTPORT. November 13

Mr H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, addressed crowded and enthusiastic meetings at Seddonville and Waimangaroa last evening and was accorded votes of thanks and confidence. At the latter place Mr Holland referred to certain, statements made in Wellington by Air Coates with reference to the British C ouncil ol Action and China, and said the desperate plight of the government was revealed when its leader found himself impelled to make wild allegations, which could not be substantiated when he substituted a personal attack tor a political criticism. Mr Coates had said that Mr Holland had sent a cablegram to the British Council of Action in 1925 and that he had suffered rebuke at the hands of .Mr J. H. Thomas, because erf that cablegram. There was no truth in either statement. A cablegram had been sent by him to the Council of Action in 1925 and consequently there was no record whatever .of any attack on himself bv Mr Thomas, arising out of such cable, and furthermore Mr Thomas had publicly declared in favour of tho establishment ol a Council ol Action at the time it was formed and bad moved a resolution expressing the British Labour movements approval o both establishment and object of the Council of Action was pre-eminently a peace movement. Mr Coates s statement relating to Ids own attitude with respect to China, was equally misleading and a refutation of that eamm won hi he found in the pages of h. booklet- “Chapters in the * 'stm> ol China,” in which lie set forth tli.it a handful of British nationals m China wore really in danger instead of sacrificing thousands of lives and spending many millions of money in a lutde vai it would he more common sense to Provide for their removal from the dange zone.