Russian Criticism Of Mr. Fraser Replied To By Mr. Nash

Wanganui Chronicle, 21 June 1949, Page 6

Russian Criticism Of Mr. Fraser Replied To By Mr. Nash

WELLINGTONN, Last Night (PA). —“What Mr. Fraser is advocating they have already in the Soviet Union, and it is strange that anyone advocating the same measures as they have should be classed by the Russian Press as ‘raving,’ ” said the Minister of Finance (Mr. Nash) this afternoon, commenting in the absence of the Prime Minister, on today’s Moscow cable. “That,” added Mr. Nash, appears to be an indictment of their own system.” The cable from Moscow, to which Mr. Nash referred, reads as follows: “It is nonsense to suggest that the Soviet Union threatens New Zealand,” says the Soviet trade union journal Trud. It dimisses as “wild nightmarish ravings and hysterics,” a recent speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. Peter Fraser, in which it says he tried to justify his proposal to introduce universal conscription. Trud says: “If Mr. Fraser continues in such style he is in danger of sharing the fate of Mr. James Forrestal, of the United States, who began with similar raving statements and ended by jumping from the sixteenth floor of a psychiatric hospital.” Trud, quoting Mr. Fraser’s statement on the possibility of a Pacific pact, says: “No single country in the Far East threatens New Zealand. This includes the U.S.S.R.”