LAW AND ORDER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 140, 14 May 1940, Page 10

LAW AND ORDER.

PRESERVATION BY FORCE. MINISTER’S VIEWS. Law and order could only be preserved by force, said Rev. J. Hubbard in bis address at tbe morning service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Sunday. The present struggle, lie said, was 'a challenge to Christians t" fight to preserve their rights. Units or the Red Cross Society and St. John Ambulance were present at the service. The horrors of the concentration camp were an instance of the moral degradation of the Hitler regime, said Mr Hubbard. They were an evidence of its strident go'dlcssness, truculent erueltv and brutal aggressiveness. Ho then dealt with the breaking by Germany of promises because of territorial ambition. No civilised order could stand without the sanctity of the pledged word, he said, and home and business life were based on it. Hitler’s regime would break down because of the lack of tbe fundamental basis of any decent regime of civilisation. , . Hitler was out to smash Christianity, said Mr Hubbard, and he had openly boasted that he would get rid of all the Christian ministers and would smash the Roman Catholics as well as the Protestant churches. Already, hundreds of ministers were in concentration camps. If we came under German rule we could not expect anything better that was being experienced in Germany to-day, or in the places overrun ”by licr. Therefore if we valued Christianity it was a challenge for us to fight. Law always, needed an appeal to force as a final authority. Justice without force, was without power, and force without justice was tyranny. We must therefore put together justice and force so that whatever was just was mighty and whatever was mighty was just. “In spite of all our sins we do stand for truth, as against all the lies which can be proved bv tbe simple method of comparing Hitler’s promises with his performance,” said Mr Hubbard. “Wo stand for sincerity as against perfidy and treachery, for (freedom as against the method of the concentration camp and secret police and for justice as against robbery with violence in high places. Britain has her faults, but, in all fairness, where is there any comparison with her record, however ancient, with that of modern Germany? Where is the British equivalent for that masterful muzzling of the Press whereby the whole German population is prevented from learning any facts of public interest except in that strictly limited measure and in the special version approved by the German Government. What have we in our regent history at all approaching the persecution of the Confessional Church in Germany? Where in British territory is the concentration camp, in which several thousands of persons whose views do not tally with those of the Government are deprived of their liberty, separated from their families, often brutally maltreated 1 and in any case sent to the living death of indefinite imprisonment? Where is there in our record anything that can he put on a par with the treatment of Pastor Niemoller or of thousands oF Germany’s Jewish subjects, their homes wrecked, their families dispersed, their property wantonly confiscated, tiieir means of livelihood removed, their very right,to stay in the country cancelled? the preacher asked.