SENTENCE ON PRIEST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22964, 20 August 1936, Page 11

SENTENCE ON PRIEST

REDUCED BY HIGH COURT THE NEW GUINEA CASE (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) SYDNEY, August 19. (Received August 19, at 11 p.m.) The High Court, on appeal by the New Guinea mission pries.t, Father Anthony Cranssen, reduced his sentence from five years to six months to date from May 1. The majority of the court held that the sentence was out of all proportion to the seriousness of the offence. DRAMA OF THE JUNGLE RIVAL MISSION'S HUTS BURNED iFrom Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, August 13. A drama of the New Guinea jungle, involving a Dutch mission priest, has had its sequel in the High Court of Australia, sitting in Sydney, to which the priest, Father Anthony Cranssen, appealed against a sentence of five years' imprisonment with hard labour for arson, imposed in the Supreme Court of New Guinea by Judge Wanliss in May. Cranssen, now at the Emu Plains prison farm (New South Wales), pleaded guilty to the charge before Chief Judge Wanliss, but explained in an affidavit read before the High Court that he had been told by his solicitor at Rabaul that a plea of guilty would obviate publicity, and that he would be merely fined £5 or £lO. Furthermore, he said, he had but a poor knowledge of English, and had not understood properly what had been dene in court. It was alleged that the accused, while in charge of the Guyebi Mission, had resented the placing, by a Lutheran missioner named Welsch, of native Lutheran boys in nearby villages and had sent an armed party of his boys to burn down the Lutheran boys' huts. Father Cranssen's own account of the incident, told in his affidavit, was that he had resented the placing of the rival mission boys in those villages. Yet, Welsch, by leaving them there without a white man in charge, was breaking regulations framed for the protection of the territory. The burning of the huts, he said, was a necessary disciplinary measure, decided on by him only after he had heard of a plot, hatched by the Lutheran boys and other natives, to attack the mission station during church service, and to kill all there. "The burning proved effective," Father Cranssen stated in the affidavit. " I never at any time threatened to shoot the boys or any of them. My boys took guns only to protect themselves. Although attacked, I have never fired to hit any native, nor has any native been shot by any Catholic missioner in New Guinea." A feature of the hearing of the appeal was an attack by Mr Eugene Gorman, K.C., who appeared for Father Cranssen, on what he described as the " extraordinarily violent language" and " unfair criticism " of Chief Judge Wanliss during his summing up of the case before sentence. Mr Gorman quoted in his argument the strong remarks of Judge Wanliss, who had said, he pointed out, that Father Cranssen had been "a traitor to his church—a church that had spread Christianity to all parts of the earth." It made the judge's blood boil to think what he had done. "You are rendering the work of the Government more hard and more dangerous, and your conduct may be the cause of loss of life for years to come," the judge had said, according to Mr Gorman. "It is usually the Bench's privilege to criticise the Bar." said Mr Gorman. "But such agitated rhetoric is surely a very serious departure from the staid and dignified tradition which usually characterises judicial utterances. The language is so exaggerated and shows the introduction of such strong feeling that it greatly debases the Chief Judge's argument. It is just a fulmination of eloquence without anything behind it at all." In accusing Father Cranssen of treachery to his church, and of cowardice, said Mr Gorman, Judge Wanliss accused a young man who had taken his life in his hands to enter a country filled with savage natives who had never before seen a white man. Father Cranssen had seen his two companions in mission work killed by natives, and had been close to death himself. He had taken the responsibility any lone white man would have taken and had planned the action he did to prevent bloodshed. Even had there been no suggestion of a plot against him. Father Cranssen was justified in taking drastic steps to send the Lutheran boys away, when they had no right to be there, and when their presence among natives of an entirely different creed must lead to trouble. Mf Justice Starke, who presided in the High Court, agreed with Mr Gorman that the sentence seemed very severe, but added that Chief Judge Wanliss might have local knowledge of that region which the High Court did not possess. Mr Gorman. He has no more local knowledge of that particular region than you have, your Honor. That district is just a place on the map to him. It was arpued for the Crown that, even if Welsch, in placing the Lutheran boys in the villages, had broken the regulations, Father Cranssen had no riaht to assume the power to remove them, especially not by violence. Mr Justice Starke announced that judgment on the application for leave to appeal was reserved.