LIQUOR PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 49, Issue 15048, 29 November 1923, Page 5

LIQUOR PROBLEM.

SEIZURE OF TOMOKA.

A CRITICAL SITUATION.

Cress Association —Electric Telegraph—CopyriglU

WASHINGTON, Tuesday.

The situation following the seizure of the Tomoka is rapidly becoming critical.

White House, which earlier was confident that international feeling would subside to-day, stated that the seizure was not made under the provisions of the proposed treaty between the United States and Britain.

Mr Henry Chilton, the British Charge d’Affaires, stated that he was amazed at the American policy. “I think it is a pity the seizure should have been made while we were still negotiating the treaty,” he added. Meanwhile the tensity at Washington hourly increases, since a vigorous British protest is regarded as certain. The Department of Justice, however, asserts that the Tomoka’s alleged British registry is faulty, —Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.

PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT,

NEW. YORK, Wednesday.

The New York Times Washington correspondent says President Coolidge infoimed correspondents that he expects io protests from Britain, and asserts that the case is within the scope of the decision of October, 1922, in which the Federal of Appeals in New York upheld the seizure of the British schooner Henry Marshall, which was captured nine miles off the New Jersey coast while unloading a liquor cargo into boats plying to the shore.

The Court held that the unloading was incomplete with with the threemile limit, that the cargo was improperly manifested, that the vessel lacked a license to unload at night, and had been fraudulently transferred to the British registry.

President Coolidge pointed out that Britain at first protested in the Marshall case, but withdrew the protest upon proof of defective registry. The President’s explanation was elicited when the correspondent pointed out that considerable fear was felt that the Tomoka case might produce serious ill-feeling between Britain and the United States. The President’s attitude seemed to connote that he considered the event highly improbable.—Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.