REPLY TO MR. HOLLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 290, 28 February 1928, Page 1

REPLY TO MR. HOLLAND

“SAMOA WILL SETTLE DOWN” OPINION OF MINISTER “We have been most patient with Samoa, but we must be firm. Very soon Samoa will settle down again and our government of it, which has hitherto been regarded as quite good, will again be recognised as in conformity with the best traditions, of the race to which we belong." This is what the Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. O. J. Hawken, says ot the position in Samoa. He also voices severe criticism of the attitude of the Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party, Mr. H. E. Holland. M.P.. in recent speeches on the trouble at the Islands.

Labour was traditionally hostile to anything that savoured of British Government, said Mr. Hawken at Papatoetoe last evening, and for this reason he did not take much notice of Mr. Holland, because he had never heard Mm deiend any British Government. It was evident that, while New Zealand’s duty was to govern Samoa for the Samoans, the trading interests in the Mandated territory were not sympathetic t o the Administration. Like the Maori, the Samoan was easily swayed, and the exercise of a firm hand to bring him from his . resent unrest back to stability was required. "I have frequently heard Mr. Holland and his party give the most fulsome praise to Russia and Russian revolutionaries,” the Minister went on, 'but somehow the British method of Severn ment is always ‘wrong’—it seems to be a bugbear to the Labour Party. "Mr. Holland is now hobnobbing *ith tile Hon. O. F. Nelson, who has been deported from Samoa for the good of Samoa. No nation ever governed the dark races as well as Britain. We have governed justly and in every case to their advantage.’’ This attitude might have been expected of Labour, with the exception that on this occasion Labour, for its own convenience, had adopted the cause of the wealthy trading interests.