WAR SERVICE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20127, 22 December 1939, Page 3

WAR SERVICE

CONSCRIPTION ISSUE PERTINENT QUERIES REPLY TO MR. BARNARD MR. STEWART’S VIEWS (jfer iTesa Association.) DUNEDIN, this day. Some pertinent questions were asked to-day by Mr. W. Downie Stewart, in reply to what he described in an interview as the “astonishing” statement issued by the Speaker b£ tile House of Representatives, the Hon. W. E. Barnard, on the subject of conscription. “Mr. Barnard says that if it comes to a question of conscription we should get a mandate by referendum before adopting it,” said Mr. Stewart, “but on the major issue as to whether we should go to war no referendum was taken, and quite rightly. “If it was unnecessary. to consult the people about going to-war,” Mr. Stewart added, “why consult them on the lesser issue as to how to fight the war? In fact the Government did not even consult Parliament before agreeing to help Britain, though in the past it has always said that would be imperative. “I was glad they acted promptly and ignored their past views, but it looks like swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat to say you will commit New Zealand to war without a referendum but you will not conscript without a referendum.

“Mr. Barnard said that, having no son, he is not prepared to compel other people’s sons to go to war,” Mr. Stewart continued. “Does this mean that if a referendum on conscription is taken all the spinsters and bachelors should be disfranchised? If this rule is to apply in war time, why should people without children be allowed to compel other people’s children to go to school in peace time? Why should members of Parliament without children vote for laws to compel parents to maintain their children? “Mr. Barnard thinks,” Mr. Stewart concluded, “that if the so-called voluntary system produces enough recruits that thereby the system justifies itself, but surely this proves the fact that the system- is grossly unfair and unjust. The question Mr. Barnard should answer is this one: A family with four sons of fighting age sends all four to the war. Another family with four sons of fighting age sends none of them to the war. What equality of sacrifice is there in such a case? Yet that is what actually happens at present under the so-called voluntary system.”