CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

Hokitika Guardian, 18 April 1928, Page 1

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

NOT WANTED BY BOY SCOUT'S

AUCKLAND, April 16.

The door of the Boy Scout movement is closed definitely against conscientious objectors to military training. Intimation of this fact has been conveyed by Alajor AY. E. S. burby, general secretary ol the New Zealand section ol the organisation, to Air f.K. Hunt S.M.. who recently suggested that an appellant against military service on religious grounds should join the Boy Scouts.

Writing to a friend in Auckland the secretary asks him to note that he has written to Afr Hunt stating, “We will not have the Scout movement turned into a dump of disloyalists. Scout law No. 2 is. A Scout is loyal to the King his country, his officers, his parents and his employers, and to those under him, while the Scout promise contains the obligation Mo do my duty to God and the King’. “Under those circumstances any ol the appellants against military training on religious grounds are not considered desirables in our movement, which even although a non-military one will not be used to iiccome a haven for those whose pecular beliefs are not those of young men who could he set up as examples for youths to follow. ’ Meanwhile the Presbyterian Church ministers, whose declared attitude toward military training has occasioned much discussion, continue to offer explanations for their position on the question. The Rev 1). D. Scott, clerk of the Auckland Presbytery, in a sermon at Onehmiga sought to justify the action of the General Assembly in seeking to reduce the military activities of the country as much and as rapidly as possible. As a step in that direction it was urged that compulsory military training should he abolished. “The onus was put upon the conscientious objector to military training to see that he was not tampering with national order in the interests ol a freak,” said Air Scott. There was a public conscience expressing itself in laws, and the law-abiding citizen, whose own conscience had been las’iioned to so great a degree by laws would not lightly set them at naught. But a good conscience might he oppressed not only by an unjust law. hut also because the particular case formed an exception to the general rule. To condemn a conscientious objector from the ranks of Presbyterian membership on the ground that his Church had not committed itself to literal and extreme pacifism was to misapprehend tiie doctrine of liberty set out in the CliUi’Ti standards. Nor had the Presbyterian Church done more at the present juncture than to claim for its members who objected to military service the exemption provided by law.

"Th.? Presbyterian Church has not asked for the abolition of all defensivo measures.” continued the preacher. “It may he admitted that tlie argument for universal compulsory military trainig lias its own r.ppea l te common sense. There is no need to charge the Church with undue inter! ,-rence. misguided pacifism or visionary enthusiasm because she records her conviction against the possible militarisation of the country, ft has been affirmed that anything like a powerful anti-war sentiment in Christianity lias been deplorably absent since the third century, and it is high time the Church took up a determinded attitude against war and all that makes for war.”