The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1928. A MYSTERY RADIOGRAM.

Evening Star, Issue 19923, 20 July 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1928. A MYSTERY RADIOGRAM.

Yesterday's debate in the House on Samoa served one useful purpose. It cleared up the mystery of a certain wireless message, which caused much agitation to Mr Holland and his party, and some short-lived misconception, with more puzzlement, in .other circles when it was published by the Press of New Zealand-at a time when the position in the islands was c '.using acme anxiety. The message received by an Auckland paper, and'circulated by the Press Association, bore no intimation of its authorship. Alter referring to defiance of the naval guard said to have been shown by prisoners, it stated that the maintenance of law and order was very doubtful, as the natives were becoming increasingly insubordinate. “ White women are no longer immune from interference and insult in croad daylight on the main road and on the beach, which is under the cruisers’ guns.” The-general opinion was said to be that the situation Was largely attributable to speeches made by Mr Holland, which were circulated freely in the Samoan language. “ Dozens of conies of M,r Holland’s pamphlet,” it was stated, “were distributed by this mail among half-castes and natives, and the influence of this, joined with the inaction of the warships, has a tremendously bad effect.” Europeans, it was added, looked to the public to force Cabinet to give the Administrator a free hand to use such force as is necessary to break up the Man and adequately piotect life; also to bring home to Mr Holland that he is endangering the lives of his countrymen by his support of the Man and its leaders ” The message was certainly more disquieting than any previous intimation of the conditions existing in Samoa had been. Moreover, since there was a censorship in the islands, and the mes sago was sent coded, there was a natural presumption that it must have been sent with official sanction, implying at the least that the statements made in it were officially endorsed. Mr Holland did not hesitate to deduce that “ this message had come through alter having been submitted to the Administrator,” and tlio idea that what ho described as a political and personal attack .upon himself should be so sponsored filled him with indignation Mr Holland had another grievance, this time without even a plausible basis for support, against the Press Association, because the prompt reply which he made to the Samoan message was published at the same length as the original communication, and not in its full text as he wrote it. That supposed injustice was in duo course taken up by the Otago Representation Committee, which, with more zeal than either knowledge or concern to distinguish between suspi cions ami facts, protested loudly against the refusal of the Press Association to “publish the reply” of Mr Holland “to the attack made on him by the Administrator of Samoa.”

Lung before llio Otiigu Hepre.scntatiou Committee appeared in the breach the suspicion that Sir George Richardson had anything to do even indirectly with the disturbing report had been made improbable, if not untenable. Tiie .message was published on March L‘j. Four days later, after a meeting of the Cabinet, Mr Coates, who could only receive his information from the Administrator, made a statement in which lie expressly declared that “the alarmist reports that have been recently circulated from unofficial sources in Samoa are greatly exaggerated.” There was obviously only one report to winch he could be referring. The different complexion which ho pub on« the position was sufficient ..implication that Sir George Richardson did not share the opinion of its urgent gravity which had been expressed in the anonymous message, Tho mystery is now cleared up. The radio message was exaggerative in its picture of unrest — tho Prime Minister did not attempt, in his remarks yesterday, to defend its contents—hut it was rot official in any sense in which the past Administrator could bo implicated. It was sent by a junior member of the Administration staff, on behalf of tho Auckland newspaper which received it, and passed by another official, who had been ’•eprimanded. Sir George Richardson did not sec it and did not approve of its contents. The censorship was defective. It was tightened up. There was no conspiracy of any kind. Rending between the lines, we can imagine easily how someone on the staff, of the Auckland newspaper, meeting a junior official when lie was on furlough, asked him to send tho paper any news that might turn up, and he did so, with too little responsibility as a reporter. With regard to Mr. Holland’s speeches, it would seem to have been quite a long while earlier that- they were published in the Samoan P;-ess. As to the pamphlets, it is not denied, apparently, that they went to Samoa, and their effect on the native mind could hardly make for assuaging a state, of unrest. The wireless message can well ho forgotten, now that it has been explained. Rut some time of Parliament might, have been saved, and a Labour 'member possibly saved from moving a very .superfluous motion, which the House treated on its merits, if it had been explained before, as soon as tho investigation was made Two mistakes that have consistently attended this Samoan business arc that the Government has always talked too late or too little and Mr Holland too much.