STERN NOTE SENT BY CHAMBERLAIN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18452, 1 May 1928, Page 4

STERN NOTE SENT BY CHAMBERLAIN.

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Received May 1. 1.50 p.m.) RUGBY, April 30. Sir Austen Chamberlain read the text of the warning as follows;

“I have the honour to inform you that since the presentation to Your Excellency of my Note of April 4 Ilis Britannic Majesty’s Government in Great Britain have watched with increasing concern growing evidence of the intention of the Egyptian Government %o proceed with certain legislation affecting the public security. This legislation, as your Excellency must be fully aware, not merely from verbal communication, which I had the honour to make to you on the 19th inst., but also from previous similar communications, made both to your Excellency’s predecessors and to yourself before and after the date of the aide memoire w'hich I had the honour to present to his Excellency, Sarwat Pasha on March 4 last, is covered by the reservation reaffirmed in my Note of April 4. “I am now instructed by his Britannic Majesty’s Government to request your Excellency, as head of the Egyptian Government, immediately to take the necessary steps to prevent the Bill regulating public meetings and demonstrations from becoming law. I am instructed to request your Excellency to give me a categorical assurance in writing that the above mentioned measure will not be proceeded with. “Should this assurance not reach, me before seven p.m, on May 2 his Britannnic Majesty's Government will consider themselves free ,to take such action as the situation may seem to them to require.

Sir Austen Chamberlain made a

statement this afternoon in the House of Commons regarding the warning addressed by the British Government to the Egyptian Prime Minister. He said : “For some days past a Bill for the regulation of public meetings and demonstrations has been before the Egyptian Parliament. This Bill is designed to alter the existing law, which has been in force for five years, and has enabled the Egyptian authorities to maintain a fair state of public order without hardship to individuals, or any tmdue restraint of public liberty. The new Bill would greatly weaken the hands of the Executive, and it would paralyse the police, on whom it wuold inflict far heavier penalties for any error of judgment in carrying out their duty than it proposes for those responsible for disorder, and it would seriously jeopardise the public peace and the lives and property of foreigners. This is the view taken by the police authorities, both British and Egyptian, and it is shared by the foreign communities. “In this connection it is noticeable that when proposals were made in 1924. which would have had a similar result, in weakening the hands of the police, the authorities, the late Zaghlul Pasha opposed them as contrary to the public interest. The British Government, who, under the Declaration of 1922, are ultimately responsible for the safety of foreigners, cannot approve these these changes. The riots in Alexandria in 1921 in which nearly twenty foreigners were killed and over sixty wounded will be remembered, and only a few weeks ago. an excited crowd which had been stirred up for political purposes, attacked and damaged the property of foreigners. In these circumstances, the Assemblies Bill and some other legislation have for a considerable time caused his Majesty’s Government grave preoccupation. Serious, but friendly, warnings regarding the Bill have on their instructions been addressed by Lord Lloyd, both to the present Prime Mniister and to his predecessor, Sarwat Pasha, but it unfortunately seems clear that the Egyptian Government are reMinister and to his predecessor, Sarwat upon the instructions of his Majesty's Government, Lord Lloyd. at seven o’clock last night, addressed a warning to the Egyptian Prime Minister.”—British Official Wireless.