POLITICAL PAMPHLET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 July 1938, Page 9

POLITICAL PAMPHLET

ATTACK ON MR NASH NOT ISSUED BY NATIONALIST PARTY (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A public assurance that the National Party would not countenance and was in no way connected with the issue of a series of leaflets which had been published and circulated particularly in the Hutt district over the signature of “Junius and Co,” was given by the chairman of the Wellington division of the National Party, Mr Cheviot Bell, in introducing Mr. S. G. Holland, M.P., to the audience at the Concert Chamber of the Wellington Town Hall last night. “I do this because the National Party organisation had asked and authorised me to state publicly that we have no connection whatsoever with this leaflet, nor, indeed, have we any knowledge as to who is its author,” Mr Bell said. “In the course of his address at Lower Hutt, the Minister of Finance, the Hon W. Nash, in a belief the sincerity of which is not questioned, but which was in fact erroneous, assumed that the pamphlet had been issued by the National Party and directed his attack accordingly. Immediately following that meeting, the general secretary of the National Party, Mr D. W. McClurg, rang up Mr Nash personally and assured him that the party was not responsible for, nor in any way connected with, the pamphlets issued. Mr Nash generously and properly accepted that assurance. “He did not, however, allow his generosity to extend to the point of public correction of the error which he had inadvertently made. Nor did he appear to find it necessary to inform his colleagues of the assurance given to him, for he has allowed the attack, which, although sincere at the time he made it, is now known to him to have been levelled against his opponents without justification, to be repeated on at least two occasions by a fellow Minister. “I do not desire to comment further on this aspect, but confine myself to giving this public a definite assurance that the National Party would not countenance and is in no way connected with the issue of the original or subsequent editions of the pamphlet,” Mr Bell said. (Applause, with an interjection: “Crocodile tears.”)