MILITARY SERVICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1707, 3 May 1917, Page 3

MILITARY SERVICE.

REMARKS BY AN AFCKLAND MAGISTRATE. Some remarks concerning compulsory military service and die altitude of the people towards it were made at Auckland on Tuesday by Mr F. Y. Fraser, S.M., in his judgment in the case of the miners charged with being parties to a seditions strike. “I am quite sure that nobody look's upon war as desirable in itself," Mr Frazer said, “no member of the British race I a lies to conscript ion because he likes it. The elenn-nl of compulsion is one that we do not care about as a mee but we have had a position forced upon Us by limiters outside tmr control, and when one comes down 1o bedrock if conscription has to he decided upon as necessary lor the ’preservation id' our national independence, we must look tin* matter squarely in the luce. ( (inscription appeal's to he the most demoera tie wav of raising a large army for our purpose.-. It was only the olher day that we im.l i’resideiil Wilson, the great Democrat, advocating conscript ion as the only reason;,hie way to raise Ihe armies of Ihe Failed Stales. We have had the spectacle of that great pacifist, W. J. Brvam scouring the country in die interests of conscription. W e saw hr the Herald this morning dial both Houses of Congress of Ihe ('idled States have carried conscription by overwhelming majorities. This has happened in a democratic country, which has had an opportunity of judging the effect of conscription in die countries engaged in the war. We have the iurlher fact that die American Federation of Labour has ottered to assist the President in every possible wa\' in the proscciUion ol the wai. Most of the defendants in lids ease liiiA'e made a study ol economic quest.ions, and perhaps I might appeal to lliem. from this point of view, that is, dm interests of the Slate and of the eommntdfy as a whole, it is heller to ensure that a single man should he called upon before, say, a man with a large family. From a democratic point of view il is only rigid that the call to service should go forward to the wealthy as well as to the poor, and that alf classes should alike he affected. It is not my business, of course, to speak on Ihe question ol conscription or otherwise: my desire is merely to point’ out a fc*AV matters that might to he common knowledge in New Zealand. I here lias hewn a trial of strength on the conscription issue at Christchurch and at Creymmilh. and the results speak for themselves as lo the feeling in New Zealand on the conscription question.