racial and national importance" once the war was over. However, soon after, the league encountered some internal conflicts. Some members of the Ex-Servicemen's Association accused Wallace-Johnson of taking some of the money raised for the Ethiopian Defense Fund. Immediately, he resigned as the fund's organiser and joint secretary. He then proved to the league that he had not handled the accounts personally, so he could not have taken any money from the fund; however, some members of the Ex-Servicemen's Association remained unconvinced. The WAYL also lost support from Azikiwe, who had become disenchanted with the league's radical activities. Since he refused to cover their activities in the African Morning Post, Wallace-Johnson decided that the league would have to establish its own newspaper, to be called the Dawn, to cover its activities, ideas and goals. He believed that the league's dwindling support issues would be resolved once the Dawn began publication. The first issue of the weekly newspaper was published on 24 October 1936, but only published on occasion over the next few months as the league struggled financially to maintain the newspaper. Mary Lokko served as Wallace-Johnson's assistant for a time beginning in 1936, becoming likely the first woman in West Africa to hold a position in a political organization. Arrest and trial By 1936, the league had established itself as a powerful force in the Gold Coast political scene. Colonial authorities and the elite class tried to find ways to get Wallace-Johnson out of local politics and possibly out of the country. Governor Arnold Weinholt Hodson wrote to the Colonial Office, asking for suggestions: While the Colonial Office discussed the possibility of deportation, Wallace-Johnson wrote an article entitled "Has the African a God?" in the African Morning Post. In the article, he condemned Christianity, European civilisation and imperialism and told Africans to go back to worshipping Ethiopia's God. On 6 June 1936, the police arrested Wallace-Johnson and Azikiwe, who had to be forced by the paper's proprietor to print the article, for sedition, in what the Negro Worker called "another dastardly plot intended to smash the Youth League". While he was imprisoned, Wallace-Johnson was told that Governor Hodson would drop the charges against him if he accepted terms for deportation. Wallace-Johnson was suspicious by this unusual gesture, so he questioned why the governor had made such a proposition. Hodson claimed that the government did not have a very good