THE GREAT WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 21

THE GREAT WAR

MR. SEMPLE QUESTIONED

(By. Telegraph—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, September 27

There was a heated interlude at a meeting addressed by the Minister of Public Works (the Hon. R. Semple). at Tai Tapu this evening following the interjection of one man who asked Mr Semple to define his attitude during 1914-18. The Minister ultimately silenced the man after being repeatedly applauded for his assertion that the Labour Government would not allow war profiteering. *

"They insinuated that I opposed war and the British Empire," Mr. Semple said. "That was untrue. I got to grips with the then Government because I was opposed, not to war, but to conscription of flesh and blood without conscription of profits from the wealthy. (Applause.) I was opposed to the ruthless profiteering of 1914 and exposed it I was imprisoned for things I said in exposing it on the grounds that my attack brought the Government into ridicule."

The Minister stoutly denied that he was asked to go to war when, after saying that as a man with five children and on £7 a week he had offered half his salary to the widows and orphans of soldiers. An interjector retorted that <a man with five children was not asked to go. Mr. Sernple said he had made the offer

on condition that members of the then Government did the same to prove their genuineness. Not one had answered his challenge.

"Under the Labour Government no one will be bled white while their sons are bleeding at the front," said Mr. Semple amid enthusiastic applause. There were jeers at the interjector when he retorted, "No, but you will by taxes."