"DEAD LETTER"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 115, 17 May 1941, Page 11

"DEAD LETTER"

REGENT TRUCE

POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

MR. HOLLAND'S VIEW

The statement that he has been forced to the reluctant conclusion that the arrangements between the Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser) and himself to reduce party political propaganda to a minimum has already become a dead letter is made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Holland) in a letter he has sent to the Acting Prime Minister (Mr. Nash). Mr. Holland's letter is in reply to a telegram received by him from Mr. Nash in response to representations made by Mr. Holland over statements by the Minister of Health and the Minister of Industries and Commerce.

"If Ministers are to be under no obligation to restrain their propagandist activities, then there can surely be no corresponding obligation on members of the Opposition," states Mr. Holland.

The text of Mr. Holland's letter is as follows:—

"Dear Mr. Nash, —I have to thank you for your telegram of May 14, in which you express the opinion that the recently-published statements of the Ministers of Health and Industries and Commerce in no way infringe the agreement between the Prime Minister and myself.

"Your attitude suggests that there is little to be gained by further discussion, and your unwillingness to ensure that, in future, such obvious propaganda will be restricted, forces me to the reluctant conclusion that the ' arrangement between Mr. Fraser and myself has already become a dead letter.

"I am only too ready to recognise that Ministers must be free to make essential public statements, but the two statements in question go far oeyond that. Mr. Nordmeyer's attack jn the medical profession and his threat of coercive action were unprovoked, unnecessary, and very offensive to a large section of the people. His allegations tend to divide the public, whereas the Prime Minister and I reached an agreement which was to minimise precisely what Mr. Nordmeyer has been aggravating. If Ministers are to be under no obligation to restrain their propagandist activities, then, there can surely be no corresponding obligation on members of the Opposition.

"I appreciate your natural impulse to defend your colleagues, but it is another matter altogether to justify every action they take, and the hope you express, that party politics will be avoided, cannot be realised if what ' have complained of is allowed to ontinue."