26,000 CIRCULARS

Waikato Times, Volume 130, Issue 21655, 16 February 1942, Page 4

26,000 CIRCULARS

TREASONABLE APPEAL BALLOTED MARRIED MEN MR SEMPLE AS SCAPEGOAT (By Telegrapn.—press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, Monday “ Some 26,000 poisonous circulars making personal attacks on me, and some containing treasonable stuff, have been distributed to all men in the recent call-up of married men without children,” said the Minister of National Service, the Hon. R. Semple, this morning.

Mr Semple said he was not in the least worried about the attack on himself, but he was worried about the treasonable stuff and at the fact that he was being used as a scapegoat for distribution of poisonous treasonable literature that endangered the country.

Each envelope sent out with a circular in it bore a 2d stamp, and it was estimated that the cost of distribution of the circulars would be not less than £6OO. They had obviously been sent out by an organisation and been posted from all parts of the Dominion. The treasonable portions of the circular, added Mr Semple, contained an appeal favourable to the Japanese and against New Zealand. They virtually urged people not to resist any Japanese invasion, and were calculated to impede the Dominion’s war effort. The circulars attempted to give people the impression that he was a conscientious objector in the last war. He was not a conscentious objector in the last war, said the Minister, and actually had never been called on to serve, as he had a wife and five young children.

On inquiry at the headquarters of the Hamilton Police District today it was learned that no case of receipt of the circular referred to had been reported.