Report

Ng Timber Lease

Now Awaited

IT is expected that the report of Mr.

Justice Ligertwood, the Royal Com missioner who inquired into the New Guinea Timber Lease case, will be pre sented to the Australian Prime Minister before the end of June.

It is generally believed that, as a result of the report, Mr. E. J. Ward will be soon re-established in the Australian Federal Cabinet and in his Department of Ex ternal Territories. In the meantime, the extraordinary case is still sub judice, and may not be commented on.

Mr. Ward has been a very silent member of Parliament in the current session. He

has been neither inactive nor silent in the Parliamentary Labour Caucus, however: reports indicate that he is the leader of the Leftist group. An increasingly severe underground struggle is in progress in Australia, between moderate and ad vanced Socialists.

Mr. L. Parer, of the Stanford X-Ray Co. Pty. Ltd., of Sydney, a brother of Mr. Ray Parer, has placed in circulation a very long “open letter” addressed to Mr.

Justice Ligertwood, in which he makes some bitter comment upon the Timber Lease case generally. He attempts to link it up with the deplorable social and poli tical conditions in the world to-day.