STRAIGHT SPEAKING

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11739, 29 January 1924, Page 7

STRAIGHT SPEAKING

PREMIER ON POSITION NEWSPAPER TRUSTS. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received January 28, 8.15 p.m.) LONDON, January 27. London newspapers feature reproductions of parts of the “Quotidians interview with' Mr Ramsay Macdonald, desc-ibiug it as the Prime Minister s frank talk with France. . Replying to his interviewer s inquiry for reasons for the widely prevalent irritation felt by the English people against France, Mr Macdonald said that the British people reproached France, first with the occupation of the Ruhr, which they believed to be the principal cause of Britain's economic distress, with not having enough consideration for the general interests of Europe, or the .particular interests ot Britain, and with giving moral and financial encouragement to the smaller nations in the matter of armaments which tended inevitably to lead to another war. PEOPLE ALARMED. Mr Macdonald did not wish to emphasise British business men’s anxiety, regarding tho prospects of the French industrial combinations, or the wide scope for people’s fears arising out of the extent of the French aerial armaments, but the British people were alarmed, and beginning to ask whether alliances should be sought elsewhere, though Labourites did not believe in armaments and alliances made for security. NEWSPAPER. TRUSTS. Mr Macdonald, concluding, referred to the newspaper trusts which had recently sprung up in Britain. Germany, France, and America. Before long, these, doubtless, would tend to work internationally. He believed that some measures ought to he taken to make it impossible to poison public

opinion. News agencies ought not to be able to circulate falsified news intended to create opinion. Governments eventually must act to preserve the Press from corruption or control by oligarchies. THE “QUOTIDIEN.” The references to the Press are specially significant. The “Quotidien" is Paris’s first co-operatively-owned nonparty newspaper, with a motto founded by 40,000 French men and women “to defend and perfect republican institutions.’’ It was only established in 1922, in the teeth of the big dailies which attempted to boycott it, and now has a circulation of two million* weekly.