SAMOA FERMENT

Evening Star, Issue 19774, 26 January 1928, Page 9

SAMOA FERMENT

MR HOLLAND ATTACKS AGAIR PREMIER'S REPLY ARORTIVE. RE SAYS [Pee United Press Association.! WESTPORT, January ‘26. Mr H. E. Holland said Mr Coates’s latest remarks sent out by Press constituted no reply to his questions. Mr Coates offered no explanation why he. would not let the Members of Parliament have the Royal Commissioner’* report and the accompanying evidence; and he did not attempt to explain the glaring contradictions which he (Mr Holland) had drawn attention to. If Mr Coates’s latest assertion was correct, and if the Man was really responsible for the trouble in Samoa, where was his justification for punishing by deportation without trial Europeans who he declared were guilty of : no offence whatever. Mr Coates and his Government would not be permitted to shelter behind what was happening in Eastern Samoa under American rule. If his statement of trouble at Tutuila was correct it might prove one of two things: either that the Samoans in the Eastern group felt that they also had cause to be dissatisfied with the way in which their islands were being governed, or the psychological influence of the unrest in Western Samoa had extended East. A student of native psychology would expect this latter to happen. In any case, New Zealand had no legislative or administrative responsibility in the matter of Eastern Samoa, but had a duty to see that its administration of Western Samoa was not weighted down with indefensible acts of tyranny. [ln regard to tiie message to which the above is a reply, the Association now telegraphs:—“The message re Mr Coates’s reply is a mistake. It does not emanate from the Prime Minister.]