ALIENS IN DOMINION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1940, Page 2

ALIENS IN DOMINION

GOVERNMENT VIGILANT FRIENDS OF ENEMY WITHIN OUR SHORES. ATTORNEY-GENERAL OUTSPOKEN (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “No Fifth Column; no brigade, battalion, company or squad of the Fifth Column, will march in New Zealand,” declared the Attorney-General, Mr Mason, in an address last night. “The Government has seen and is seeing to that,” he said. “That there are some disaffected persons in New Zealand there is no doubt. That there are some friends of the enemy within our shores I am prepared to accept as a fact. “But their identity is known or suspected and where we have suspicion we are taking and are going to take no risks. It is no discredit to the people of New Zealand 'that among them are those who would destroy them. Freedom has always, in every age, made possible the existence of ingrates. In the bosom of hospitality there is ever the danger of the viper. The Government is not blind and has not been blind to these truths. It has not neglected and it will not neglect the safety of the State.

“Subversive activities have manifested themselves in the printing and distributing of certain pamphlets which I need not here enumerate. With regard to them I am able to say that every such document that came into the hands of the police has been carefully examined by the appropriate authorities, and wherever it was considered that a prosecution ought to succeed a prosecution has been taken. It will be understood, of course, that it is not always possible to institute proceedings on the morrow of publication. “Subversive speeches of various kind, have been, are now being, and will continue to be, treated on the same footing as subversive documents. “The Government has suspended naturalisation of aliens for the duration of the war. Recently there was an idea abroad that of late there had been a rush by recent immigrants to have themselves naturalised. That is not so. To all persons of alien extraction or origin the most careful attention is being paid, and will be paid. The eye of t'he State will follow them everywhere. Some have been interned and others will follow. Some are being deported and again others will follow. The closest watch will be kept on the movements of all refugees, most of whom, through no fault of their own, will be under suspicion because of what_their less scrupulous countrymen have"done. “But while we are vigilant we shall endeavour not to be unjust. Among us are many hundreds who have fled, as we ourselves would have done, from the Nazi terror. Let us not forget that the Nazi system is 1 as hateful to them as it is to us; its downfall prayed for as earnestly by them as by us. “There is a tendency in time of crisis to look for a scapegoat. Let me in fairness say that unhappily the subversive activities with which the Government has had to deal do not proceed from refugees, but from elements that have sprung up among ourselves. Let us be vigilant, but let us be just.”