"WILD ALLEGATIONS."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 269, 13 November 1928, Page 10

"WILD ALLEGATIONS."

MR. COATES AND LABOUR.

REPLY BT MR. HOLLAND.

"NO TRUTH IX STATEMENT."

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

W ESTPORT, this day.

The Leader of the Opposition, Mr. H. E. Holland, addressed crowded and enthusiastic meetings at Seddonville and Waimangaroa last evening,,and was at corded votes of thanks and confidence.

■Shaking at Waimangaroa, Mr. Holland referred to certain statements made iu Wellington by Mr. Coates with reference to the British "Council of Action," and to China. He said the deeper*tt! plight of the Government was revealed when its leader found himself impelled to make wild allegations which coulu not be substantiated, and when be eubstttuteu a personal attaek' for political criticism. Mr. Coates had said that Mi. Holland had sent a cablegram to the '"Council of Action" in 1925, and that Ht had suffered a rebuke at the hands oi Mr. J. H. Thomas because of that cablegram. There was" no truth in either statement. Xo cablegram'.,had been sent by him to.the ''Council M Action" in 1925, and consequently there was no record whatever of any attack oh himself by Mr. Thomas arising out of such cable. Furthermore, Mr. Thomas had publicly declared himself in favour of the establishment of the ''Council of Action" at the time it was formed, and had moved a resolution expressing the British Labour movement's approval of both the establishment and the object of the "Council of Action."

The "Council of Action" was preeminently a peace movement. Mr. Coatee* statement relating to his own (Mr. Holland's) attitude with respect to China was equally misleading, and a refutation of that canard would be found in the pages of his booklet, ''Chapters in the History of China," in which ho set ft forth that if a handful of llritfch subjects in China were really in dancer, instead of sacrificing thousands of lives and spending many millions of money in a futile "war, it would be more common sense to provide for their removal from the danger zone.