MR HOLLAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 13 November 1928, Page 6

MR HOLLAND

REPLY TO THE PREMIER (By Telegraph—Press Association) WESTPOPT, This Day. Mr Holland, Leader of the Opposition, addressed a crowded and enthusiastic meeting at Seddonville and Waimangaroa last evening, and was accorded a vote of thanks and confidence. At the latter place Mr Holland referred to certain statements made in Wellington by Mi- ('nates with reference to the British Council of Action and China, and said the desperate plight of the Government was revealed when its leader found himself impelled to make wild allegations which could not be substantiated, and when he substituted person;',' attack for political criticism. Mr Coates had said that Mr Holland had sent a cablegram to the British Council of Action in 1925 and that lie had suffered a rebuke at the hands of Mr J. 11. Thomas because of that cablegram. There was no truth in either statement. No cablegram had been sent by him to the Council of Action in 19'2*>, and consequently there was no record whatever of any attack on himself by Mr Thomas arising out of such cable. Furthermore, Mr Thomas had publicly declared in favour of the establishment of a Council of Action at the time H was. formed, and had moved a resolution expressing the British Labour movement's approval of both the establishment and object of councils of action. A Council of Action was pre-eminently a peace movement. Mr Coates's statement relating '<'< his own attitude with respect to China was equally misleading, and refutation of that canard would be found in Hie inures of his booklet "Chapters in the History of China." in which lie set forth that if a handful of British nationals in China were really in danger, instead of sacrificing thousands of lives and spending many millions of mwney in futile war ii would be more commonsense to provide for their removal from the danger /one.