"HITLER METHODS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1940, Page 4

"HITLER METHODS."

AUCKLAND MOVEMENT

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED. MR. MASON DEFENDS ACTION. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The dissolving of the National Service Movement •by order of the Government was referred to in the House of Representatives yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Hamilton. He said the Attorney-General had referred to the danger of Hitler methods creeping in. Were not the Minister's methods Hitler methods? he asked amidst a loud chorus of Government denials. Was not the Minister'*, act far more of the Hitler type? Mr. Hamilton asked. The Government would have a difficult task if it tried to browbeat the people by coercion. Why worry about suoh people as the National Service Movement, who were not a menace to the community? There were people whom the Minister could better spend his time coercing. Let him get after the Fifth Column. Mr. C. W. Boswell (Government—Bay of Islands) said it was significant to find the organisation mentioned sending out circulars asking for members. The initiation fee was to have been £5 and the subscription £1 a week. How many workers could have joined a movement of the kind? The slogan adopted was: "A new lead and a new leader." That meant the overthrow of the Government. The organisation aimed at having a small committee in control, but nobody was to know what that committee was to do. That meant Fascism and subversion. Last Not Heard Of Action. Mr. F. W. Doidge (Opposition—Tauranga), refused to believe that men who were prominently associated wibh the movement would lend themselves to any organisation not above board in every I way. He was convinced that Mr. Mason had not heard the last by a long way of the action he took in Auckland over the week-end. It was unfair to make fleh of one and fowl of another, said Mr. W. J. Broadfoot (Opposition—Waitomo). "The Attorney-General," he said, "has said that the movement could come to the stage of superseding the constitutional Government, but at the Easter Labour Conference, according to the official organ of the Labour party, the Prime Minister had stated that the Government and Cabinet were responsible to the conference. Surely that wae a power outside Parliament that wae controlling Parliament." The Attorney-General, Mr. Mason, defending the Government's action, said he was prepared to admit that persons controlling the movement acted in perfect good faith and he did not believe there was any special danger attached to what they were doing. He read extracts from advertisements, suggesting that one passage set the organisation up as the master of Parliament. In normal times there was no danger from the punch which it put into its advertisements, but when events happened quickly, which deeply impressed the public, trouble might arise, and it was prudent that such 'activities be moderated. Already there had been suggestions of counter action, but this would be most regrettable. "Harm was Hot intended," concluded Mr. Mason, "and trouble did not liappe#, but that is not to say that trouble would not have arisen, and it is prudent that the Government should not take chances of trouble developing through eudden emotion arising as the result of news from the seat of war."