KICKED DOWNSTAIRS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 789, 9 October 1929, Page 9

KICKED DOWNSTAIRS

AMERICAN BIG NAVY ADVOCATE BRITISH OFFICER’S STORY Australian and N.Z. Press Association LONDON, Monday. The “Daily Chronicle” says that Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, in an interview, asserts that a mysterious American who called himself Sherman attempted to bribe 1 him to stir up enmity between Britain and America on the big navy question. “Was Sherman the notorious William B. Shearer, whose activities at the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927

are now being investigated by -n committee of the United States Senate, as General Crozier believes?” asks the “Chronicle.” General Crozier says he recognises a photograph of Shearer as that of the man who called at his (the general’s) flat in London in 1927. The man had been making anti-war and pro-American speeches. The caller offered to pay well if General Crozier would stop proposing a reduction of armaments. Later another American, who said he knew Sherman, called on General Crozier with a similar proposal, this man suggesting that the general would be well paid for a lecture tour in America if he would advocate the rights of Britain and the United States to possess navies as large- as they wanted. General Crozier says he kicked the second American down the stairs.