USE OF WORD “ARM”

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 277, 19 August 1944, Page 6

USE OF WORD “ARM”

Statement At Farmers’ • Meeting REFERENCE IN HOUSE An undertaking to examine the significance of a statement reported to have been made by Mr. A. O. Leary at a meeting of the Otago Provincial Council of the Farmers’ Union was given by the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, in reply to an urgent question by Mr. Thorn (Government, Thames) in the House of Represetnatives yesterday. Mr. Thorn asked the Prime Minister if his attention had been drawn to the following statement by Mr. Leary;—“We have got to the stage that while loath to take any drastic action during the war, we should take steps to arm ourselves so. that after the war we will be in a position to ensure that the business of the country will be carried on in a more equitable manner. He asked the Prime Minister if he would assure the House that active steps would be taken against any movements of this kind which savoured of Nazism and threatened the democratic institutions of the Dominion. The question was greeted with Opposition laughter, while Mr. Polson (Opposition, Stratford) interjected: Are you getting nervous? Mr. Fraser said he had not seen the reported statement till it had been submitted to him. and he had not had time to study the paragraph that had been quoted in conjunction with the context of the report. He certainly proposed to do so. Whether the- use of the word “arm” had any sinister meaning he could not say. (Opposition laughter.) There had been a number of loose statements going round of a similar nature Mr. Holyoake (Opposition, Pahia'tua) : There must be a reason for loose statements.

The Prime Minister, said he wanted to point out the danger of making loose statements aud the inevitability, of the law taking action where necessary. He was .not saying that the statement in question bore that constructiou. It might be in the mind of tile speaker, as a member of the Opposition had interjected, that it was moral rearmament —or immoral rearmament. However, while in peacetime wild talk was to be deprecated, in wartime it was a danger. Full inquiries would be made into the significance of the word.