A LUDICROUS CHARGE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 138, 8 December 1914, Page 6

A LUDICROUS CHARGE

A typically unfair and foolish charge against the Government is conveyed in Uie headings to some war messages in the New Zealand Times to-day, Big black type makes the following proclamation:—"More Massey Muddling . . . Escape of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. . . . How ' Reform ' Serves tho Empire." The New Zealand Times gleefully seized on some assertions of the Sydney Sun's Melbourne correspondent — absurd allegations to the effect that at a time when the battle-cruiser Australia was hot on the trail of Admiral yon Spree, the pursuer— owing to the New Zealand Government's action — was "called away from the chase to convoy the New Zealand troopships to Samoa " The report of the Sun's correspondent is utterly discredited in the light of truth. Ever since the war began the New Zealand Government has acted in accordance with the instructions and arrangements of the Imperial authorities. All the statements of the Sun's report have yet to be substantiated, but if it is proved true that the Australia was diverted from the chase of German cruisers at a time when tho Commonwealth's powerful ship had an 6pportunity to end the career of those ocean harriers, the blame must be borne by the Admiralty. Tho quarrel of the New Zealand Times must be with the Imperial authorities, and not with the Massey Government. The Sun's statement was accepted, without question, as the solid truth, and the Government's critic hastened to make a flourish with glaring type, in the hope, apparently, that any advantage gained by the misrepresentation -would not be all lost till after polling day.