STATEMENT BY PREMIER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1943, Page 3

STATEMENT BY PREMIER

CHALLENGED IN HOUSE. MR LANGSTONE’S APPOINTMENT TO CANADA. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Attempts by the Opposition during the second reading debate on the External Affairs Bill in the House to draw the Minister to Washington, Mr Nash, and the former High Commissioner to Canada, Mr Langstone, into a full review of their activities abroad met with little success.

, After a point of order had been ruled Im by Mr Speaker, Mr Langstone made passing reference to his former appointment as High Commissioner at Ottawa. He said he' had accepted the appointment for three years and had told the Waimarino people that they would have to select another candidate to represent them in Parliament. He had been surprised to see the subsequent statement of the Prime Minister in the papers and his observation that an appointment for three years was only a temporary period. “The Prime Minister had no business to mislead the people in that way,” he added. “I am prepared to stand by my own actions and take whatever is coming.” Mr Langstone said it was not a private squabble between himself and the Prime Minister. There could be nothing private in differences between men who were in the service and pay of the country.