SUBVERSIVE PAPERS FOUND

Southland Times, Issue 24230, 13 September 1940, Page 6

SUBVERSIVE PAPERS FOUND

BARBER CHARGED AT ' WELLINGTON (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 12. A charge of being in possession on August 31 of 127 copies of a pamphlet with a view to facilitating the publication of a subversive statement was made in the Magistrate’s Court against James Kelman, aged 37, a barber, employed on the railway station. The pamphlet contained an attack on three Crown Ministers in connection with the deportation of a communist. The Magistrate (Mr J. L. Stout) reserved his decision.

Senior Detective Doyle said that as a 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 books from the Left Book Club. The accused told the detective he was a member of the Esperanto Society, but the detective did not find any literature of the kind. A suitcase was found to contain esperanto correspondence and the bundle of pamphlets which was the subject of the charge. The accused expressed great amazement at these, saying that he had never seen them before. They were not in the case when he looked in it a few days before. In the breast pocket of his coat there was a letter from the organizer of the Wellington branch of the Communist Party. In reference to this the accused said: “That’s a different matter. That’s a different story.” Senior Detective Doyle indicated that similar pamphlets had been posted throughout the city. Each pamphlet stated that it was issued by the National Committee for Peace and the AntiConscription Council. The police had stopped meetings of that body and on the surface it had been defunct so far as the police knew. Defending counsel said the accused, with several hundred others who attended the meeting of the Peace and Anti-Conscription Council at the Trades Hall, signed on as a member. 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 saw no reason to believe that there was anything in the room when the police searched it.