The Case of Private Webb.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16168, 23 March 1918, Page 8

The Case of Private Webb.

After a delay which it is not very easy to undorstand, the sentence passed upon Private P. C. Webb for refusing to oboy a lawful command as a member of the Expeditionary Ftfrce has been promulgated and confirmed. He has boen ordered to undergo two years' imprisonment with hard labour, and the sentence will meet with general approval. His case calls for special notice beeauso of the position -which he has occupied as a member of

Parliament;- and also because of the peculiar ground upon which he chose to defy tho law. Before considering the points which he placed before tho court-martial, we should point out that the court had before it simply a member of the Forco who had been lawfully sent into camp, and whose duty of obedience was the same as that of every' other soldier. Mombers of Parliament are not exempt from service by law, nor can wo see any reason whatever why they should be exempted. If the frionds of the member for Grey should urge, as is quite likely, that there is a sinister significance in the fact that the only member of Parliament to be conscripted was a Labour man, the sufficient reply is that this member was the only eligible one to whom compulsion had to he applied. Others went without any compulsion at all. Members" of Parliament are, as individuals, in no sense indispenSablo, nor does a man, by becoming a member of Parliament, acquire any rights or privileges, or any sacred character, in virtue of which ho is placed above the obligations upon other citizens so far as the duty of service is concerned. If Private Webb chooses to think differently, he will find very few people to agree with him. Even those supporters in Grey to whose opinion ho appealed, cannot be supposed to believe that members of Parliament, as such, should bo excluded from the operation of the Act; they claimed that Private Webb's was a spccial case—that, not members generally, but this particular member, should be exempt.

it was, indosd, on the ground that ho was a special case, . that Private Webb' first asked for exemption, and, upon having his claim rejected, and rightly rejected, resolved to defy tho law. Ho has no conscientious objection to service. He told the court that if he had beon rcjested at the byelection ho would have been willing to go to the front. This admission destroyed evon the appearance of reason in his decision to defy the law to which he had all along offered as much opI position as he dared. When his whole j'ploa is examined, it reducos itself, we

think, to this: that because he dislikes the law himself, and believes that a particular procedure should have boon follower! before it was placed upon the Statute Book, he has a right to disobey it. He is nothing more, that is to say, than a political resistor of tho lan", and his chance of being considered either a hero or a martyr is exactly the same as that of a turbulent M.P. who is suspended for disorderly behaviour on the floor of Parliament. W'c aro sorry to seo any man choosing

contumacy and prison on grounds so little capable of uogetting either sympathy or respect. There is another aspect of tho matter that must be noticed. Private "Webb is a member of Parliament, and, as such, one of the makers of the country's laws. . It was, therefore, specially his duty to sot a good example by obeying the law, and if he had had tho causc of Labour so much at heart as to be willing to give careful thought to the question of how* best to promote 'Laßour's interests, ho would, by cheerfully obeying a law to which he was personally opposed, have grasped a signal opportunity of pointing Labour back to the lino of constitutional agitation from which it has gono so far astray. As it is, he has crowned his career of opposition to tlin national cause, for which ho has not lifted a finger, by a defiance that is neither rational nor reputable, and has done no good to himself, to Lauoiir, or to anything else.