MR KEIR HARDIE AND INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9021, 7 January 1908, Page 3

MR KEIR HARDIE AND INDIA.

A PERSONAL STATEMENT. COMPLAINTS OF -MISREPRESENTATION. In the course of hi 3 speech at the Wellington Town Hall, the other evening, Mr J. Keir Hardie, M.P., replied to criticisms regarding his alleged doings and sayings in Indi:i. He had been too long in public life, he said, to ba upset by criticism. (Hear, hear). As a rule they cou'id take it that the mure bitter the criticism the greater reason there was for the people to understand why that criticism was Welled. He was a plain man, a man of the people, without cne pretence to be anything else, and in the course of his trip he had visited India. It appeared that something had happened there which had caused a good deal of excitement in this dominion. He was not aware until quite recently (until a few days ago) of the state, bordering upon frenzy, into which a large portion of the public Press had been thrown by his alleged sayings and doings in India. "I only want to remark," said Mr Keir Hardie, ."that the people of India and the officials, from the Viceroy downwards, and the public Press there, knew nothing Hboufc those things. (Lond laughter.) He could well remember the astonishment there was in Calcutta when the news was published there from London that he was playing the part of a fire-brand in Calcutta, and exciting the people to sedition and rebellion. They knew nothing it, and would not yet if the news had not come from London. (Loud laughter.) What were the facts? A discredited and disreputable journalist in Calcutta, who had been oliicially repudiated by his brother journalists (long before the speaker went to India) because of the unfair criticism of Indians and their affairs, had endeavoured to create a certain impression of him before he arrived in India. This man found some difficulty in maintaining that caricature when the speaker got to India. "My speeches are not, as a rule, of the kind that one associates with the unthinking, uneducated, irresponsible firebrand." But having created this impression, that man had felt bound to live up to it, and had cabled Home a report attributing to him what he had never said —which the Press on the spot proved conclusively from the evidence he was alleged to have drawn his report from—proved in the face of the world that "that man was a liar. (Great applause.) "And that report, his single report, went out." There were four other journalists from Calcutta present, representing .the "Tribune," the "Manchester Guardfan," Central News Agency, and the Press Association (not the New Zealand Press Association). All these four representatives had supplied correct news. In New Zealand the Press only had heard • the concocted story. They were hoodwinked." "I have had some criticism in my time," declared Mr Keir Hardie, "but never anything so insulting as the remarks of the New Zealand Press concerning myself, my personality, and my opinions." (Applause.) 'Why don't you answer them' was a question which had been published in the papers themselves. His reply was that life was too phort. Instruct the editors of the New Zealand Press as to how they should perform their work ! If they could not do it properly, then they should stop drawing salaries under false pretences. H e had made it a rule of his life to ignore criticism. (Applause). This was all he had to say now. At the proper time and place he would have a good deal '"o say about India and the conditions of tha*; unhappy country. (Hear, hear, and loud cheers).