SAMOAN AFFAIRS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19871, 15 February 1928, Page 14

SAMOAN AFFAIRS.

Sir, —The Herald, in its issue of February 6, makes a sneering attack upon myself. It does not attempt to deny my charges against the Samoan Administration and the New Zealand Government. It has not even had the fairness to give publicity to some very material and sorious charges made "by me. It gives full and prominent publicity to all Government propaganda against myself, but does not give me a fair chance of stating my case to the public. It cannot , deny the charges I have made, and so it resorts to cheap personal abuse of mysglf. It suggests that 1 claim that everyone is wrong except myself and my associates. The real position of facts is that the Herald and the Administrator and the Government it champions claim that everyone in Samoa is wrong except the Administrator. The last thing I wish to do is to cloud the controversy with a multiplicity of issues. 1 should be quite content to take one issue, and test the credibility of tho Prime Minister ott that alone. The Prime Minister has stated: — "But undoubtedly the menace to the business atld wealth of the traders, of whom Mr. Nelson is the largest and most influential, of the Administrator's experimental native copra selling policy, was largely responsible for the present movement. 1 ' I have already stated that the Administrator's experimental native copra selling policy was not launched until March, 1927, and the trouble in Samoa commenced long before then. I have also stated that such,policy was merely a retaliation by the Administrator against tho traders, *ho sympathised with the natives. I challenge tho Herald to accept responsibility for the statement of the Prime Minister above quoted. If the Herald is game to have this issue tried by a New Zealand jury, 1 am. ' 0. F. Nelson. [Having failed to establish -his charges against tho Administration of Samoa, Mr. Nelson will not gain anything by answering criticism of his actions and Statements with abuse. The article to which he refers was not "a sneering attack." Tho Herald has not suppressed any "very material and serious charges made by him. It excised from his state* ment, published on February 6, two passages containing allegations regarding men now dead. Other newspapers also refused to publish such matter. Mr. Nelson's challenge cannot be taken seriously. He failed to establish his case before an impartial tribunal of the high' est standing, and it would be a ™ time and utterly futile to «set up another j tribunal to traverse the same ground.— Ed. Herald.] v