COLOUR PREJUDICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 255, 28 October 1929, Page 7

COLOUR PREJUDICE.

Negro Millionaire Complains Of

England.

DEBARRED FROM HOTELS

(Received 1 p.m.)

LONDON, October 27.

Mr. Robert Abbott, a wealthy negro newspaper proprietor of Chicago, reported to be a dollar millionaire, has cabled to . Mr.' 'J. Marley, M.P. (St. Pancras N.) complaning that he and his wife were not only refused accommodation in London hotels on account of their colour but, when returning first-class on the Aquitainia, were forced, into the grill- room and deprived of the music and other entertainment. Mr. Marley, who is raising the matter in Parliament, stated . that three prominent coloured people, recently excluded from London dance halls, had written Lord Passfield, Dominion Secretary, resenting this affront.

A dance hall proprietor, interviewed, declared that his hall was intended for white people only and he absolutely refused to admit coloured people, however eminent they might be.

Mr. Robert S. Abbott has been an a three months' holiday tour of Europe with his white wife, and he declares that he met no colour bar until he reached England. Mr. Abbott .is owner and editor of the "Chicago Defender," the largest "coloured" newspaper in the United States. His treatment in London, he says, has been as follows:—"Refused, admission to thirty hotels; compelled to leave one hotel at half an hour's notice; and requested to leave another after having booked rooms for a fortnight. "I went first to Paris," said Mr. Abbott to an interviewer in London, "where I was accorded the highest treatment a man could have. I was received heartily at the first hotel I entered. In the cafe everything was open to me; nothing denied to me. We went on to Antwerp, Brussels, and The Hague. The treatment was the same. It was the same at Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, -Wiesbaden, and Cologne;" He ultimately went to reside with a coloured professional man. He pays a tribute to the courtesy of the English people.

FILCHED BY SOVIET.

ITALY'S SECRET CODE,

Received 1 p.m.)

PARIS, October 27

Tlie Russian writer, Bessedowsky, tells in the Press how the Soviet obtained the Italian secret code. He says an Italian attache in Berlin offered the code for £1000 to the Soviet Embassy in Paris. A Soviet diplomat, under the pretence Of a desire to verify its authenticity, borrowed the book, and photographed exory page while the Italian waited in the next room. He then told the Italian the Soviet had decided not to purchase the code.

BRIAND REFUSES. OFFICE IN NEW CABINET. (Received 1 j?.m.) PARIS, October 27. It is reported that M. Briand has refused an invitation to retain the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in M. Daladier's new Cabinet. The Socialist Deputies for the first time in fifteen years have consented to form a coalition Government with Radicals and Socialists if the National Council of Socialists consents.