DISLOYAL ACTIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 94, 19 March 1940, Page 7

DISLOYAL ACTIONS.

ANTI-WAR STICKERS. DEPUTY-PREMIER’S WARNING. HAMILTON. March 18. The discovery of stickers bearing anti-war inscriptions on dairy produce loaded on an overseas ship at Auckland was commented on by the Deputy-Prime Minister (Hon. P. Fraser) tn an address at a recruiting meeting. Amid applause, he stated that the time had come when the Government must put a stop to that sort of thing. “Attempts are being made to disturb the unity of the people of this country,” Mr Fraser said. “I do not want to speak in anything like a threatening or an exaggerated way, for I believe these people are very few, but those misguided workers who placed the stickers on to dairy produce crates are doing the greatest wrong to this country.”

By means of these stickers a message might be received by dock workers in Liverpool and London that misrepresented New Zealand and its people, for very few believed the utter rubbish that was printed on them. The time had come when the Government, in the name of the people, must put a stop to that sort of thing. It was not freedom of speech, or even freedom of controversy. It was a. deliberate attack upon the country, a deliberate misrepresentation of the people and spirit of the Dominion, and an apparent effort to hinder the war organisation and purposes of the people. Mr Fraser referred to the type ol propaganda commonly used, and observed that one of the most amazing things to attempt to justify was the attack on Finland. He added that people who listened to. the Moscow radio, accepted everything that was said, and acted on it in this country, were acting not as New Zealand citizens, but as representatives, protagonists. and agents of a foreign country. And that- would have to he considered.