SIR JOSEPH WARD INTERVIEWED.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 5 August 1919, Page 7

SIR JOSEPH WARD INTERVIEWED.

DECLINES TO DISCUSS POLITICS

AUCKLAND, Aug. 5. +T, * Joseph Ward, interviewed, said the fact that Germany had expressed a wish to become a, member of the League of Nations indicated that she recognised that power was centred in it. He believed when the tide of Bolshevism had subsided, and Prussia was divided into a number of States, a republic was more than probable, and they would come in. The military spirit, he believed had received its deathblow by the reduction of Germany's armed force, which meant the complete abolition of conscription in Germany, and. was the forerunner of the abolition of conscription in all the countries, and the disappearance of the other elements that for forty years or more had enabled Germany towards building up scientifically her great war machines.

Sir Joseph Ward declined to discuss politics in any form until his severance with the National Government, though he fully recognised the situation in New Zealand, and realised there are difficult problems ahead.