OBJECTION TAKEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20261, 9 November 1935, Page 8

OBJECTION TAKEN

ALLEGED STATEMENT BY MR COATES By Telegraph— Press Association WELLINGTON, November 8. The editor of the “Evening Post” has received the following cable message from the Soviet ambassador in London (Mr T. Maisky): “My attention has been drawn to a report published in your issue of August 22 in which you quote Mr Coates, Minister of Finance in New Zealand as saying that ‘statistics show that there are probably more people hungry in the Soviet Union than anywhere else. I had it from the Soviet Ambassador himself. I discussed the matter with him for hours.’ If Mr Coates is correctly reported then I should like to make the following! comment. “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Coates in London last summer at the Lord Mayor’s reception, and we had a talk, not a very long one, on the situation in the Soviet Union. In this talk I outlined the progress which had been made, particularly during the last five or six years Certainly I did not in our conversation use the words attributed to me above as it would be contrary to the facts. ‘lndependent observers of ail kinds who have made prolonged surveys of conditions in my! country have published reports which completely refute any suggestion that the U.S.S.R. abounds with hungry people.”