REFERENCE TO KING

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1934, Page 7

REFERENCE TO KING

INQUIRY ON ’ARMAMENTS

CHAIRMAN’S OPINION OF REASON.

EMBARRASSMENT OF COMMITTEE.

AMERICAN FIRM SEEKS AN ALIBI.

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.

Rec. 7.15 p.m. Ottawa, Nov. 16. The introduction of King George’s name into the United States Senate committee investigation into the munitions industry at the Washington hearing recently was to embarrass inquiry in the opinion of Senator Gerald Nye, chairman of the committee, who discussed the incident in an interview at Ottawa on Friday.

Explaining how the communication referring to the King was introduced, Senator Nye said: “It was brought in with the consent of the entire committee and there was hardly a second thought given to it at the time. Had we refrained from inserting it, though, there would have come a day of reckoning and the discovery that we had left out the name of King George. There are people who delight in taking a rap at him and we should never have heard the last of it.

“There was no charge nor any spirit of accusation accompanying the committee’s doing that. It became part of the official record of the committee and stands for just exactly what it is, nothing more nor less. It involved a letter written by a representative of an American munitions firm who was striving to explain what terrific competition he had, and his alibi, in part, seemed to want to show that British munitions competition even had to resort to the King.”