PORT ALBERT AFFAIR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 49, 1 June 1916, Page 2

PORT ALBERT AFFAIR.

—.— EMPLOYMENT OF AN ALIEN. k An indignation meeting was recently held at Port Albert to protest against the employment of a German by Mi Benjamin Martin Gubh while the latter’s son is at the front. The following letter has been received by the Herald from Mr Gubh in reference to the matter: —

!‘M thought 1 was a wise, liberal, and polite thing, and so do many others, for lot me say that the 117 signatories of that protest do not represent the whole of the \pyal population of the district, nor one-half ol it. I value a man for his manliness, not for the place of his birth. ihe internment camps are costing us probably £20,1)00 a year, anl 1 think the interned aliens ought to earn theii living, both for our sakes and their own. This opinion the chairman ol the indignation meeting strongly expressed to me the day before, and when I put the man In the way ot earning a living and becoming a valuable, producer, instead oi an idle consumer, his head swells with indignation. My German friend is as respectable and trustworthy as any settler in the district, industrious, energetic, thoroughly conscientious, and gentlemanly, though liorn in Germane. It hatched from a swan’s egg, what matters it being born in a dockyard? The insinuation that my son and J arc in conflict over the matter is a base slander, Ho would have preferred a liriton; so would I, as far as that goes, if we could have got one as good, hut our alien, with one or two exceptions, is the best man I have hud in -It) years. The maudlin sympathy with my family was a waste of line Seeling. Me part with our German friend with regret. As to the Minister ol Delenee having disgraced the country by sending the man here, I expect that Mr Allen and Mr Massey are as capable judges as the inlignant protesters, and they have the welfare of tlie country equally at heart.”