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Show IGOMS'S MEW I WAS iWERPOLATED Correspondent of Central News Responsible for Wrong Impression. I t LONDOX. Feb. 21. This morning 's ' session of the inter-allied conference of Socialists and labor parties was occupied occu-pied to the exclusion of all other busi-, ness with a discussion of an alleged misrepresentation of the attitude of Samuel Gompers. president of the American Amer-ican Federation of Labor, toward British Brit-ish labor, as outlined in press dispatches from Washington yesterday. Delegates to the conference generally regarded the press telegrams as a malicious effort ef-fort to sow discord between the labor elements of the allied powers. The conference, con-ference, after instructing a special com-mittee com-mittee to deal wdth the matter, approved ap-proved sending a. cable message to Mr. Gompers inviting him to repudiate "the gross falsification of your message, which is apparently part of a campaign of malicious misrepresentation .by the enemies of labor." The text of Mr. Gompers' message was printed in all London newspapers yesterday afternoon and most of this morning s editions. It follows: "All are advised that any person presuming pre-suming to represent American lahor at your conference is self-constituted and unrepresentative. American labor believes be-lieves German influences have inspired the London conference and until this is disproved wdll avoid the conference." The latter sentence was not in the text of the message received by Arthur Ar-thur Henderson, former minister without with-out portfolio in the war cabinet, and leader of the labor party, and the conference con-ference declared the w7hole message was obviously an effort to create discord. dis-cord. The correct text of Mr. Gompers' Gom-pers' message was made public by Mr. Henderson today, but delegates declared de-clared it would be very difficult to counteract the wrong impression created by the wddespread publication yesterday of the incorrect version. The Central News explains the passage pas-sage referring to German influence interpolated in-terpolated in Mr. Gompers' message to the labor conference by saying that it was added to the dispatch .by its New York correspondent. Uufortunately, the ticker machine omitted the quotation quota-tion marks on each side of the passage pas-sage and the dispatch ran on as if the whole were Mr. Gompers' message. During Wednesday's session of the conference Arthur Henderson read a cable message from Samuel Gompers, announcing the refusal of the American Federation of Labor to participate in this or other conferences at the present pres-ent time, owing to the belief that German Ger-man influences were their inspiration. After listening quietly to the reading of the dispatch, the message was referred re-ferred to a committee to decide upon the form of the reply that was to be sent to Mr. Gompers. J |