SAMOAN TURMOIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 295, 5 March 1928, Page 1

SAMOAN TURMOIL

MR. HOLLAND RETURNS TO ATTACK BRITISH JUSTICE UPHELD Press Association. WESTPORT, To-day. At a meeting of the Buller Labour Representation Committee on Saturday, Mr. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, referred to the recent remarks of the Minister of Agriculture in regard to the Labour Party’s attitude toward the Samoa question. Mr. Holland said the reply to Mr. Hawken was that the policy of the Government in Samoa was a violation of all that was best in British tradition, and an abrogation of the fundamental principles on which British jurisprudence was based. The charge that the Labour Party was supporting the capitalists was as childish as it was insincere. Of six Europeans with whom the Administrator was in direct conflict, three had been deported, but hundreds of Samoans are now being arrested and flung into prison. , No one could justify the Government’s action in permitting Judge Woodward to adjudicate in those cases. The fact that only recently the judge himself had pleaded guilty to a grave offence which might have had dangerous consequences, "could not but add to the seriousness of the position. Matters were now made worse by the operation of a censorship which would not allow people in New Zealand to know what was happening in Samoa, and would not even permit business or other radiographs to go out until the contents had been divulged to, and approved by, the Administrator, while the Samoans were only permitted to know the Government’s side of the case so far as events in New Zealand were concerned. This method was never followed in any country without producing results that made bad reading in history.