"BASES OVERSEAS"

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25051, 15 November 1944, Page 3

"BASES OVERSEAS"

WELLER BOOK ATTACKED VIEWS OF MR W. M. HUGHES Mr W. M. Hughes, who, as Prime Minister of Australia, attended the 1919 Peace Conference, has bitterly attacked war correspondent George Weller's new book "fiases Overseas," states the Sydney Morning Herald. Weller. as correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, was at the fall of Singapore and Java, and was in Australia in 1942. In his book he argues that America should claim military bases in all parts of the world for the purpose of preserving order.

He attacks the Australia-New Zealand Pact, and states that in Paris after the last war, when President Wilson proposed that the League of Nations should guarantee racial equality to Asiatics, Mr Hughes threatened to make speeches to inflame anti-Jap-anese sentiment on the American Pacific Coast. "Judged from the press reviews I have seen," said Mr Hughes, "it is a narrow-minded, myopic, atrabilious outburst, full of gross misrepresentations, and venomous attacks on everything British or Australian. "I understand that Mr Weller hails from Chicago, the nesting-ground of Colonel McCormick; whether the colonel collaborated with Mr Weller, or inspired him to write it I do not know, but certainly Mr Weller's book is the kind of 'To Hell with King George' stuff for which the colonel is notorious. "Mr Weller talks at great length about the last war, about this war, and about what is to happen when the war is over. It is a thousand pities he didn't stick to writing about Chicago, for it is abundantly clear that he knows nothing about the outside world."

BROOKLYN ANNOYED COMMENTS BY NOEL COWARD NEW YORK, Nov. 14 Brooklyn residents are "gunning" for Noel Coward for something he wrote about them in his new book, "Middle East Diary." Coward wrote: "I talked with tough men from Texas and Arizona. They were magnificent specimens. But I was less impressed by the mournful little Brooklyn boys 'in tears amid the alien corn,' with nothing worse than a bullet wound in a leg or a fractured arm." Said a Brooklyn boy: "Tears nothing I Who the hell does this Coward think he is, anyhow?" Returned soldiers in Brooklyn were particularly incensed. One said: "Since when have elephants had greater courage than wild cats? The Brooklyn gang is plenty tough. Coward ought to come here and look at 'em." RUSSIA AND POLAND Josef Stalin is creating a large, wellequipped army of Poles in Poland to serve the Russian-backed Provisional Polish Government, states the United States News, Washington. This suggests that the Polish Government-in-exile in London may lack the force with' which to speak effectively when the time c6mes "for Poland to regain her independence;