Imperial Troops for Show Purposes.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 74, 9 August 1912, Page 5

Imperial Troops for Show Purposes.

CISBORNE COURT-MARTIAL

At the last meeting of tlie Canter- j bury Women's Institute at Christ- ! church, Mrs. A. Wells presiding, the J following resolutions, forwarded to the j Institute by the National Peace Coun- i oil, were endorsed:—(l) "This Council [ emphatically protests against the con- [ templated imprisonment of ' defaulters i under the Defence Act in military; camps, as proposed in the Governor's] Speech. It wishes to point out to the; Government, to members of Parliament, and to the public the increasing bar- j barity necessitated in enforcing com-j pulsor.v military service on tlie youth of the Dominion, a compulsion repugnant to past generations of the British people, the freedom from which has rightly been amongst the most cherished possessions of our race; (2) that the Canterbury Institute demands the immediate repeal of tho compulsory clauses of the Defence Act of '1909----1910; (3) that the Canterbury Women's Institute strongly protests against the bringing of Imperial troops to New Zealand for show purposes, with the evident object of encouraging the love of soldiering for its own sake. That this is so is clearly shown by an extract from an article in the April number of the 'New Zealand Military Journal,' the official organ of the headquarters staff, which is as follows: — "Here in the Dominion we labor under the disadvantage of having no regular soldiers on view—tho captivating glamour of military life is wanting. If only our cadets could see a good regiment at work' ■ and (4) the Canterbury Women's Institute considers that the assignment of the portfolios of Defence and Education to the same Minister intensifies the already grave menace of militarism to the school children of the Dominion. It calls upon all parents in terested in the moral and physical welfare of their children to demand immediately the separation of these offices, pending <the repeal of tho compulsory clauses of the Defence Act, and whilst militarism still forms a part of the school curriculum." "The Institute indignantly protests against such proceedings as those reported from Gisborne, whero a court-martial with all its attendant military and quasi-legal paraphernalia is trying youths for an offence which could and should be dealt with in a civil court. It regards such court-martials as a menace to the civil liberties of tho people of New Zealand, and points out that the youths, after being forced into tho army against their own will, arc'now subject to punishment and persecution by their officers, both legally and illegally, without proper means of redress; they lose tbe protection of the civil law and trial by their peers and become subject to military usages and to a court-martial from which thero is no appeal and ijvherein their accusers ' are virtually their judges."