THE NATIONALITY OF THE HON. A. MYERS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 17, 1 March 1918, Page 8

THE NATIONALITY OF THE HON. A. MYERS.

STATEMENT BY MR MASSEY. A lady at a recent meeting at Kelburn, Wellington North, asked Mr Massey whether it was true as she had heard, that the Hon. Mr Myers,' Minister of Munitions, was a German. Mr Massey said that he knew something of Mr Myers’s history. Mr Myers belonged to the Jewish race. He born at Ballarat, Australia, His family, on the father's side, had been in England for two hundred years, but his grandfather had gone to Poland as a Rabbi, and Mr Myers’s father came but to Australia and married there. Mr Myers came over to New Zealand and joined some relatives here, taking up public life very early in his career. “I want to say this," said Mr Massey, "that I honestly believe that Mr Myers is a loyal citizen of our Empire. He is a British citizen by birth, and as a Minister I know that he has done his duty faithfully and well."

In the course of a recent letter to an Auckland resident, Mr Myers himself said: “As regards my mother, I have never heard of any relative of hers existing in Germany, but (with her two sisters and two brothers, being orphans) emigrated to Australia nearly 70 years ago to join other relatives already there. Ten years afterwards they took up their residence in New Zealand, and, as early pioneers, went through all the vicissitudes of pioneer life, possessing all the qualities of vigorous citizenship, ’’