EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 8 February 1923, Page 3

EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

and divorce proceedings. Per Press Association—Copyright, BRISBANE, Wednesday. An amending Bill placing both sexes upon equality in respect to divorce proceedings, also making lunacy an additional ground for divorce, has received royal assent.—A. and N.Z. Cable. LONDON, Feb. 6. Sir James Allen has written to the Duke of Devonshire asking him to convey to the Executive Council of the Exhibition a protest against Mr Belcher’s report in which New Zealand’s dairy industry and railways are adversely criticised. Sir James Allen answered what he describes as Mr Belcher’s belated claim “that the report was confidential, and declares that the Exhibition Publicity Department issued extracts to a number of newspapers, of which Sir James Allen only heard indirectly. He thereupon requested a copy of the report. Had he been given an opportunity to consider Mr Belcher’s report before it was published, he would have been able to point out that it was largely misleading and inaccurate.

“It seems inconceivable,” sir James Allen says, “that the Executive should send a Commission for any purpose other than to represent the advantages of the Dominions participating in the exhibition. I cannot imagine that Mr Belcher was author* ised to act as an ungenerous critic as he did in the case of New Zea* land. Whatever his instructions were it would have been a friendly act to • inform the New Zealand Government as well as its London representative of the nature of the report in order that it might have been promptly answered.”

Sir James refutes in detail Mr Belcher’s allegations derogatory to dairying. He declares that dairy farming has been, is and will be sucpessful. Referring to the railways, Sir James Allen admits that improvements were suspended during the war, but leeway is now being made up. Sir James Allen adds: “It is unjust to criticise conditions caused by our war sufferings, and not give us credit for efforts to improve the railways.”— A. and N.Z. Cable.