CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16163, 18 March 1918, Page 2

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE rBESS." Sir. —It is surprising to think in a tilne like this that there are people in New Zealand whose conscience still refuses to let them fight for England. If a man's conscience is able to let him sit -dlv by and watch Germans murdering women and babies, defiling homes, torpedoing passenger ships, bombing s(j*iools, otc., it is time sonicone began a new religion, or that the Defence Department helped them to take the warp out of their natures. Some of the boys who went away with the Alain .Body aro still there, longing lor a short leave to get home, but are prevented by the unpatriotic, the "ro ld-I'oo Ltd crowd," and tho C.O.'s, whose religion prevents them from goiiu; to give some of our Main Bodv hows a spell from the trenches. If the Defence Department, begins to reject the C.O.'s then every man whose feet haven't yet thawed out will rush the Defence Department, so primed up with religious sentiments chat the place would soon look more like a religious conference than m respectable recruiting office. 1 noticed one of your correspondents mentioned the (so-called) rougti | treatment meted out to some of the C.O.'s while in camp, by the soldiers who were there to look after them. "Well, all I can say is that if a man defies the law ho knows what is com ing to him, so it is his own fault. If the C.O.'s behave like obstinate mutes they can't expect their coriimanding officer to detail off a squad to wait on them hand and foot. The Germans have shown the cloven hoof time and time again. Every J< y vou will lead of deeds that would have struck horror into us if they had oeen done by savages, let alono by a socalled civilised religious country, and yet a man will sit idly by and say his consciencc would not let him Interfere. If a man defiled and wrecked the home of one of our C.O.'s, would Jic look idly on? I guess net. Yet this is, and has been, going on in Europe since the war began, and yet the* consciences of our C.O.'s haven't been pricked, and people still pity the poor conscientious objector who is so basely treated by the Defence Department. It is a surprising world, isn't it? Well, thank goodness some people haven't got a conscience. —Yours, etc.. DISGUSTED SOLDIEIt. March 16th.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE TRESS." Si»", —As the "wife of tho C.O. who received by far the lighter sentence at the recent court-n.arti'al, I would li:<e to add my protest to that of Cr. Borrows, of Woolston, concerning the lenirth of tho sentences. "When I. made enquiries I was ioKl that had Mr Itoberts submitted to the medical examination for State (not military) reasons, no doubt his sentence would have been tho same' length as my husband's. Miss lJanghan says that the :ourt \va;i fair in procedure; it may have been. .As to tho difference in the length of sentence it certainly was not. Nothing could hare been further froai my husband's wishes than that ?<Tr Hoberts's sentence should he double the length of his, because he failed to obey in one little technical matter.— —YourSj etc., PAULINE HENDERSON. Hedcliffs, March 16th.