MINISTER’S DECREE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 168, 15 June 1940, Page 7

MINISTER’S DECREE.

MOVEMENT MUST DISSOLVE. AMAZEMENT EXPRESSED. Pec Press Association. AUCKLAND. June 15. Notice has been served by the Attorney-General (lion. H. G. R. Mason) upon the. National Service Movement that the organisation must be dissolved immediately. It will be recalled that a public meeting was held in Auckland recently when resolutions were passed urging the formation of a War Cabinet, complete political unity and conscription. In a statement to the Press to-day the chairman of the movement (Mr Bryan Kingston) said that at the request of Mr Mason, who telephoned from Wellington, he and Rev. Gladstone Hughes met Mr Mason in his Ministerial rooms at Auckland yesterday afternoon. Air Mason said the movement must be dissolved immediately. The interview lasted an hour and a half. Air Mason indicated that the Government considered the movement dangerous in that it tended to encourage the growth of an authority over and above, if not actually superseding, the legal authority of the Government. “I asked Air.'.Meson under what authority the Government copld dissolve the movement, as I considered the existing regulations were not being conterveried,” said Air Kingston. “The Minister replied that he did not think' the existing regulations wide enough, but that regulations would be. brought doivn. When Air Hughes and I reported to the executive this morning the latter expressed utter amazement that the Government, should see fit to curb the activities of the movement, whose main objective was the formation of truly representative non-party War Cabinet ns adopted in Great-Britain. “The supporters of the movement feel that .if the Government could only fake this step with reference to tlm War Cabinet harmony and concord would be immediately., brought to New Zealand, and the war effort could be accelerated to the maximum,” concluded Air Kingston. The executive will place a full report of the interview before the general committee of the movement on Alonday aml j n accordance with an undertaking by Air Kingston a reoly will be sent to the Minister that-day.