SEIZED BOOKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 11

SEIZED BOOKS.

SEVEN MEN CHARGED.

ALLEGED SEDITIOUS INTENTION. PASSAGES READ IN COURT. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Friday. Passages from documents that had been, seized by the police were lead iu the Police Court to-day during the prosecution of seven reputed Communists, who were charged with printing and publishing a book with an alleged seditious intention, entitled "Karl Marx and the Struggle of the Masses." Mr. E. Page, S.M., was on the Bench. . Defendants were John Harvey Blair, James Albert Birchfleld, Richard Henry Webb, Herbert Ricliard Bryan, William O'Reilly, Leslie Raymond McDowell and Charles Morris Brooks. All pleaded not o-uilty. Brooks elected to have Ins case taken separately. Defendants conducted their own defence. A number of passages in the pamphlet, which he contended were of a seditious nature, were read to the Court by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. Evans-Scott. These extracts he described respectively as setting out the present conditions 01 the world as leading to revolution and war, stating that the revolution 1:1 Russia was an example for the working class, that there were other methods of class struggle than the ballot box, that the present time was appropriate for bringing about a revolution and recommending the methods that should be adopted, and ending with an expiession of the aims and objects of Communism. Mr. Evans-Scott said all the defendants were members of the central executive of the Communist party of New Zealand. That body controlled the printing of the "Red. Worker," the printing machine itself and all the documents that passed through it. The pamphlet on Karl Marx stilted on the front page that it was published by the Communist party of New Zealand, and on the last that it was printed by the "Red Worker." In their raid the police had seized a large quantity of correspondence and the minutes of meetings of the central executive. In some of the minutes some of the defendants were stated by name as being present, and in other cases other names appeared which he contended were aliases in use by some of the defendants. Mr. Evans-Scott also read a letter which he said had been found in the possession of Webb. The letter was addressed to the secretary of the Communist party of New Zealand, and stated: "We must make our printed documents as legal or as nearly legal as passible and confine our illegal to circulars." Detective Hall said that approximately 2500 copies of the book 011 Karl Marx had been found. Webb, on opening the case for the defence, admitted that he was general secretary of the Communist party, but denied that lie was responsible for or a party to the publishing of the pamphlet. Accused contended that the book was a document containing purely historical facts surrounding the life and works of Marx. If the pamphlet were established as seditious, it meant that it would be illegal to write a life history of Lenin, Stalin and others of their kind. A denial that he had anything to do with the printing and publishing of the pamphlet was also made by Blair. The case will be resumed on Monday.