Mixed

NZ Truth, Issue 1142, 20 October 1927, Page 4

Mixed

Sir John Pindlay's argument, then, is leas absurd than might appear. It ls startling, but it has some foundation. He has invited the Full Court to aay after him that Samoa is held on mandate from the League of Nations, that it is not part of the territory of New Zealand, that the mandate is not even given to New Zealand, but handed to His Majesty the King to be exercised "for and on his behalf" by his Ministers in New Zealand. Here is more confusion for the- plain man, since "the King's Ministers" legally does not mean the legislative assembly, but his representatives in the Dominion. That being so, the Samoan Act was passed by a Parliament which had no power to apply it, or, as our legal friends say, the act was ultra vires. // ts a oery pretty argument and it took Sir John all da}) to develop it. Color to it is lent by the fact that the world's greatest jurists are still puzzling over the question of justwhere the authority in these mandates lies. Who ultimately controls Samoa? Is it the League, Great Britain or New Zealand? But the weakness of Sir John's shooting lies in the fact that the question is altogether too big for the Full Court of New Zealand. The array of learned judges will not take the responsibility of upsetting the apple-cart as completely as would any such decision as the one they are invited to make. To Sir John's broadsides they presented an armor-plated regard for the existing order. The place for such an argument would be a court of bigger 'jurists somewhat further away from Samoa. And even then the odds are that there would be a division of opinion as to what was what.