A VERY OPEN LETTER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1426, 29 April 1912, Page 6

A VERY OPEN LETTER.

MOSTLY ON FIGHTING. TO-THE HON- THE PREMIER^ A'lte'piitiitioii 'representing the_ Society of Friends and other organisations onposed to the Defence Act waited upon the }'riir.2 Minister and'the Hon. iir. ■ Myers (Minister for Defence) this afternoon. . . . Mr. Morris said that militarism was repugnant to him, and to those who felt a3 he (lid. and thin feeling of repugnance was as strong as life itself. Ho asked where this sort of tiling was going to stop, and emphasised the cost which it would mean to the country. It would be found to tie more than it roulit stand. —Press Association. Thursday last. fl'o the Hon. T. Mackenzie. Sir,— ' Don't they worry you, Mr. Mackenzie—these deputations? They do me. And you worry me, too. 1 don't think that, really, you have much liking for fight, and. mark me. without .fight v.e won't sci< this thing through. IVe will not have the 100,000 trained men by line. You see, we've been chasing rainbows in poppy land, liko opium smokers, for twenty years, only we haven't calledUhem rainbows. We called them Liberalism. .You can't, build anything so hefty as universal military service on « foundation of Tiiinbows. ■ Perhaps, Sir Joseph, now happily relegated to quiet life, did not fh.iuk of that when he brought the system in. 1 did. Though you mny be a little backward for bedrock tight, Mr. Mackenzie, you are not deficient in intellect. Do you reuiemter making a statement at a farmers' gathering at l'alnierston Korth, that "the British Army was beneath contempt" '-I Jt is, as far as numbers go. Compared with the admirable. German army, which could beat ltussia, Japan, France, and th'.i United States armies combined, our own army is the zero of militarism. Building an Army on Rainbows. [ .suppose you know, • Mr. Mackenzie, that it liiis taken just 102 years to build tlie invincible German army, anil now we arc building ours. We do not even commence on level terms with contingencies. .'We are very.iiku u roue,,wlid gets married, and .then starts to wipe oft his bills villi the iiioiicy-l«nilel!>--il ran't be done. AVe have twenty years of rainbows to wipe cut lirst. 1 notice that Air. Urundy, a .Wellington sehoolniHster, has stated, with complacency and admiration, that "the schools now are very different from what tliey were twenty years ago." And, are tliuy not:- Mr. "Cirundy snould lust see a typical office boy's writing and spelling, fciich boys are uiie of the |iroducts (if. pur twenty years' ~ poppy-limit—they can't .write," they ■can't' .sped, they caliiibt carry out the simplest duty ' ctniscicntioiisly. Hut they .'siiiukc cigarette's in business hours, and •dodge duty ns'b'aril as,.they know how". ' Out of the .mass , of these, we now have .to , make, soldiers—the most vtrcnuoiis ' calling', on earth.. It"' makes me laugh : sometime?, Jlr. Mackenzie, llow does it affect you? I see the Society of Friends Las. been nt you in Auckland". They are rather admirable people. They are the only sect. T.hich has never persecuted. But, as far us [can make out from the bad English of the Press Association, they really had jio ca=e against military training. Neither did your reply to them fall on my mind with-the force of a shower of .masonry. • Were you afraid of them? .The Attitude of Little Bethel Clergy. Let. me tell you of a conversation which 1 had with a Little Bethel clergyman last week. He said that military triiin'.ing would do nothing for the "moral upJiftment" of the race. I said neither would insurance, but people still continued to insure. He said that it would cut into the available time which boys had for preparing themselves for the ordinary vocations of life. I replied that it would no doubt interfere with the cigarette and street-corner industry. He said that tlie swearing at the "camps was terrible, anil particularly mentioned Oringi, a.s having hit the buli's-t-ye 'for"' profanity. 1 ansivereil that tiis swearing could not he justly charged to tlie military system—it was merely the. ordinary life of the State coming to the camp. He asked how about boys coming into camp from good homes? ,T replied that it : was,. .In some extent, tho duty of the officers to ped that they inarched out as spotless a> they marched in. :

Hethen fell to talking about the place of war in tlie life of a nation. It had no place, he tluinzlit. r. told him that the last word on that subject had hco.'i said by A'on .Sdiichting, Clau-fwii/., and Colonel Maude. War was ■the cure for the inevitable corroding iniluenees of peace. If his Church, or all the anti-militarists combined would put li]) their best debaters against the best debaters on the other .side, and before a competent tribunal, (he peace party would \o<c- His reply to that was so lomark<iblc Unit it deserves a whole paragraph to iU'lf. "from the national standpoint," he raid, "we would no doubt lose, but, as Christ inns, we object to war altogether." "Where do you Hud your authority in the Scriptures'?" I asked. He quoted the passage in St. Luke's gospel, where tlie disciples said: "Lord, behold here are two swords. And lie said unto tlism, it is .enough." Of course it was easy to reply that, from the point of view oi' worldly wisdom, even 5U)O(I Jewish swords would not have been enough to meet Ihe fragments of Roman soldiery then serving at Cacsarea, .'lcriisiilcin, and Dnimvscu--, hut, I did not trouble him with Hint. Instead I asked: ' ]):> inu not think that nu appeal to the sword, in the case you mention, would have meant, tho entire defeat of the very ink-ion for which Our Lord came -to earth?" That finished him. Mr. Mackenzie—will You Face the Music? l'erhaps you will think, Mr. Mackelv/ie, that this is somewhat outside the domain of practical politics. I do not think so myself. Some of the churches have strenuously entered the domain of. politic.-, and (as a minister once told me) they, or some of them, are going to make strong effort tn break down our military system. Are you going to let them? The trouble is, Mr. .Mackenzie, that, a great many people do not see that what has been in the past a question for the navy is now becoming more and , more a question for the.'Army. Invention is making the North Sea narrower every year. Submarines can now do non-stop runs of '20*10 miles at ten knots, so ono sees no reason why the whole British fleet could not be "submarined" in a single night. "We dream the colossal dream that, as a nation, we arc unsinkable. AVell, the marine engineers dreamt the same dream about the. poor Titanic, but she sank all the same. Don't you think it would be nice, if in 1910, we really did have those 100,000 trained men? So, will you stand by the system? 1 admit it is not easy to stand by a system calling for individual energy in a State which your party has filled with political and industrial lotos enters. If you do etand by it. I cannot promise you my Tote—l know that that will go against you at next election—but I think I can promise you that if you and the Hon. Mr. Myers face the music of this conscription question as fearless and wise statesmen should, you will win the admiration oi thousands of the thinking clas3 in the community. Your old, but rather doubting friend, GYEO. P;fs.—l suppose you have heard that, irhen the Home Fleet was wanted in a hurry in 1904 to deal with the Russian Kaltir. Fleet for firing on the Hull trawlers it could not weigh, anchor for thirtysix hours, because many of the officers •were absent shooting in the Highlands, and no one knew exactly where to find them. .Personally, X have, never felt quite safe since then, t wnnt an army— a real, downright militarist army.