FRANKNESS URGED

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1935, Page 7

FRANKNESS URGED

EMPIRE DEFENCE PLAN SIR M. HANKEY’S MISSION LONDON PAPER COMMENT FURTIVENESS ATTACKED

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 1.15 am. London,. Jan.. 3.. Though Sir Maurice Hankey, chairman of the Imperial Defence Committee, who has been touring the Dominions, is not due from Canada until Sunday,- most newspapers are already giving prominence to the reported outcome of his tour, which the Daily Herald features as a forerunner of a full scheme of Empire defence. The Herald says Labour members of Parliament will make another attempt to secure from Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a frank statement about these mysterious transactions. In the meantime if Mr. MacDonald does not expedite a statement the public of the Dominions will soon know far more about Sir Maurice’s mission than even the House of Commons. The Herald editorially recalls Mr. Stanley Baldwin’s appeal to Germany to tear away the veil of secrecy surrounding its military preparations. . “It is stupid, mischievous and intolerable that Sir Maurice’s perfectly sensible and proper mission should be given the appearance of a furtive and conspiratorial errand by Mr. MacDonald’s pitiful attempt to persuade the House of Commons he was on a private holiday,” says the Herald. “The newest revelations about the mission make it imperative that the veil of secrecy should be torn and that the Government should give the world a full and frank statement of the defence preparations of the Empire.”