R.S.A.

Southland Times, Issue 18619, 18 August 1919, Page 5

R.S.A.

THE AUCKLAND DISPUTE. DOMINION EXECUTIVE’S REJOINDER. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, August 16. The executive sub-committee of the New Zealand R.S.A. has considered the press statement made by Mr E. F. Andrews in explanation of the attitude of the Auckland committee and it expresses the opinion that Mr Andrews’s statement consists mainly of inuendos, irrelevancies, misstatements, exaggerations and half-truths, and that it is intended to completely cloud the real issue, which is simply that Auckland has exceeded its constitutional powers by acting in a high-handed and flagrantly disloyal way, and as the Auckland Association thought fit to magnify a relatively small question of internal management into the dimensions of a serious dispute and to make the disagreement public through the columns of the press, the Dominion Executive in justice to itself and to the whole of the 32,000 returned soldiers throughout New Zealand to whom it owes its authority and is responsible, was forced to issue a statement of the real facts of the case and that the statement stands. The Dominion Executive, while regretting the necessity for its utterance, says that it has no need either to add to or substract from it. Certainly it does not intend to be drawn into a press controversy on the subject, which will be dealt with in a constitutional manner.