SEAMEN’S DIFFERENCES.

Evening Star, Issue 18043, 10 August 1922, Page 7

SEAMEN’S DIFFERENCES.

OFFICIALS EXCHANGE COMPLIMENTS.

LONDON, August 8. (Received August 10, at 10.30 a.m.) Mr Havelock Wilson has received Mr

Walsh’s letter of June 25, enclosing a copy of a missing letter, dated April , 16, in which Mr Walsh declares that Mr Wilson during a visit to Australia in 1922 told him' that he did riot wish British members to be transferred to the Australian Union. He. Accuses Mr Wilson during the war of assisting shipowners to rob the country of millions, and after the war he seemed more anxious to shelter profiteers than to protect members of his union, and he was not anxious to make shipping profiteers disgorge some of their plunder, which the seamen of England piled up for them during the war. Mr Wilson, in a lengthy and sarcastic reply, suggests that Mr Walsh is suffering #rom a mental breakdown, and advises the services of a nerve specialist. He adds; “ You state that I have been driven from pillar to post by the British shipowners,_but it is alleged by some shipowners that I compelled them to do things that they otherwise would have left undone. My union during the last three years transferred over 1,200 members of (the Australiaa Seamen’s Union to the British saib» asdtboSfc gs&asauis fee, .You

talk of the conditions which you won for tho Australian seamen, and appear to have an idea that if you were at the head of affairs in England you would have accomplished a great deal. Why Have you remained so long clown under? I am sure that in the Old Country there would have been ample room for ft man of your outstanding ability! but you evidently prefer to lot off your spare gas at a long distance. You ask mo to rid the seamen of tho British shipowner. For what purpose? The latter serves a useful function, and creates employment for thousands. Doesn’t he fill a function in life equally as useful as yours?”—A. and N.Z. Cable.