FARMER CHARGED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 143, 18 June 1940, Page 11

FARMER CHARGED.

SUBVERSIVE STATEMENT. PUBLICATION ALLEGED. (From Our Correspondent.) PALMERSTON NORTH, Monday. Allegations that he was responsible for the publication of subversive statements in a cyelostyled pamphlet entitled "The Spark," described as the official organ of the New Zealand Bolshevik I party, were preferred in the Magistrate's Court against a Himatangi farmer, Leo Sim. j Detective-Sergeant A. B. Meiklejohn detailed a search the police made of Sim's house and produced large quantities of books, papers, documents and pamphlets, many being cyclostyled on newsprint. A typewriter had been found there and part of a roll of newsprint, which Sim claimed was used by his wife for dressmaking. Asked if he was still secretary of the Communist party in New Zealand, Sim had said he was not and that the secretaryship had been up North for two years. Sim had declared himself a Bolshevik, the Communist party being too pacifist for him. Witness detailed tests made with Sim's typewriter on sheets of paper cut from the roll of newsprint. Answering accused, witness recalled Sim having denied that the pamphlet had been taken off on a duplicator at liis home. Only one copy of the pamphlet had been found in Sim's possession, and it was in an envelope. Sim saying it had been sent to him. The detective told accused he was unaware that leading newspapers had quoted excerpts from the pamphlet. Experts were called to prove that addresses on envelopes containing the pamphlet were in Sim's handwriting and that it had been Sim's typewriter that had been used to make the stencil for the duplicator. The prosecution was not completed i when the Court adjourned.