NATURALISATION AND ENEMY TRADING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1740, 26 July 1917, Page 2

NATURALISATION AND ENEMY TRADING.

SPEAKING in the House on Tuesday evening, the Hon. A. L. Herdman said there should be one law of naturalisation throughout the Empire. We had had difficulty in regard to dealing with alien property and alien subjects. There was no

uniformity of treatment, and thousands of enemy subjects were at liberty in Great Britain. He believed that we had been stricter in New Zealand in regard to alien subjects than they had been in Great Britain. His own opinion was that, as soon as the war was declared, every enemy subject should have been interned or sent back to his own country. Again, as soon as war broke out, the Government took steps to prevent enemy trading, but there had been difficulties. As far as he could discover from the Customs Department there were no goods from enemy countries now coming into New Zealand. Many of the goods previously obtained from Germany and Aus-tria-Hungary now came from Japan and the United States. Mr Wilfox-d: “How about the quantity? The Minister: “I can’t tell you about that, but the importations from the United Stales have increased enormously since the war.” He urged the need for national organisation, and in this connection remarked that the Right Hon. \V. U, Massey and Sir Joseph Ward had done incalculable good to the Dominion during their trip to England. Much had been done by them which could not have been done if they had been divided, and they were entitled to the everlasting gratitude of the community. No Government carrying on business during a war could benefit everybody. They had all sections of the community against one another —even in time of peace.