"ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 64, 22 April 1914, Page 10

"ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE."

HOLLAND GOES TO GAOL.

ONE YEAR FOR SEDITION.

"TO SHOOT TO KILL." - CONSTABLES AND NAVAL MEN. Press Association. WELLINGTON, April 22. Henry Holland, who was convicted on two counts of using seditious language in speeches on October 26 and November 2, was to-day sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, to be counted from February 2. Holland delivered a long address to the court. He gave a large number of reasons why sentence should not be pronounced, the principal one being alleged inaccuracy of the speeches on which the charges were based. The papers quoted in the court, he declared, invariably took up an attitude against the interests of the workers in connection with the strike, and nothing was too base for them to utter. He characterised the reports of two speeches as egregious jumbles, and complained that the prosecution had not presented certain vital facts to the court in connection with the Basin Reserve speech. He had not put a witness in the box because his sense of manhood would not allow him to clear himself at the risk of jeopardising a comrade. He referred to his having been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for sedition, uttered at Broken Hill, and made a lengthy statement as to the circumstances of his trial and release after serving five months, and of the subsequent defeat of the Wade Government which he attributed in a great part to the way in which it had dealt with hirn and others.

In connection with the incident, at the time of his Newtown speech he said, he had known that'constables had had 40 rounds of ammunition served out and had orders to shoot straight, and men from H.M.S. Psyche had told him they had been instructed, if ordered to fire on the strikers, to shoot to kill. All he (Holland) had done was to urge the men not to fire on men, women, and children. The Chief Justice, in passing said the law regarding sedition was not made by the judges, but by the legislature, and no objection was raised to it at the time. The reports taken for the "Maoriland Worker," which had been read by the acci.sed to show the variance between those reports and the daily newspaper reports, ..would have brought him within the law of sedition. Accused failed to recognise the necessity for- peace and order, without which there could be no progress. If he invited other people not to be peaceable, and to resort io violence, he was really an enemy of the people. The brotherhood o- man would nev.r be achieved by violent means. Such a brotherhood did not merely mean workers, but the brotherhood of all classes. The law allowed for a sentence of four years, but accused would be dealt with leniently and would be sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment without hard labour.