THE NATHAN INCIDENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 42, 18 August 1941, Page 6

THE NATHAN INCIDENT

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—When the Hon. Mr. Webb, in reply to Mr. Bodkin in the House on Friday last, said that although the incident was alleged to have happened at the end of one week it was not reported to the police until the beginning of the next week, he knew that I tried to contact my solicitor on the Friday afternoon, but he was absent from his office all the afternoon; that I interviewed him at his private house that night; that Saturday and Sunday intervened, and that on Monday morning my solicitor took signed statements from my typist, my accountant, and myself and handed them to the Superintendent of Police early that afternoon. Mr. Webb knew all this because these facts are set out in a letter from my solicitors to the superintendent on June 20. Yet he tries to draw a "red herring" by alleging that there was undue delay in reporting the matter to the police.

In reply to Mr. Webb's invitation that I now do Mie prosecuting, I would refer him to the last paragraph of my solicitor's letter to the Commissioner of Police on July 22 in which was said: "If the police are not prepared to prosecute; then there is nothing more to be said, except ,that our client assumes that you will agree that he did his duty to the public and to himself in reporting the matter to the proper authority." Besides, if a person's house is burgled, it Is not usual for the police, if they decide not to prosecute, to invite the householder to do so.

I should also remind Mr. Webb that this matter was revived by one of his own party, Mr. *McKeen, when he asked an urgent question in the House on July 24, inquiring why no police prosecution had been instituted pursuant to my complaints.

I have challenged Mr. Webb to publish the whole of the police file. In reply to Mr. Bodkin last Friday, Mr. Webb said that evidence obtained by the police was never published. If he will not'publish the whole file I now challenge him to publish the correspondence between my solicitors and the police.

It is only £ate to say that there is nothing whatever in the suggestion made by a member of the Opposition, that pressure had been brought to bear upon my typist not to give evidence.— I am, etc., HUBERT L. NATHAN.