The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1912. ON THE WRONG TRACK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 17, 12 September 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1912. ON THE WRONG TRACK.

The “National Peace Council of Now Zealand,” whose offices are in Christchurch, not very far from the peaceful Avon (into which gentle stream, by-the-way, recently some misguided people precipitated a gun taken in the Boer War) forwards a circular letter to us with regard to the proposed amendments to the Defence Act. It further asks for assistance to resist the proposed amending legislation and the establishment of “Detention Barracks,” or military discipline camps, to which it is proposed that those resisting the law shall be sent. While admitting fully the right of any one to conscientiously object to actual military service and that there should be provision to meet the case of such persons, we certainly cannot support the tactics of those responsible for the issue of the circular. They are militant enough in their remarks regard-

ing the defence authorities and seem to entirely overlook the fact that these latter are merely doing their duty and endeavouring to carry out the law of the land. <Ai good deal of very frothy nonsense is talked, quite the reverse of peaceful, by these selfstyled apostles of peace, but it is the noise of the few striving to make themselves heard. The country has, through its representatives in Parliament, by a very great majority decreed that proper military training is good

and desirable, and it is the law of the land. The law must ho obeyed: most people willingly accept the call made upon them for their country’s sake, and the country is beginning,to realise the great good to the young men themselves the enforced training is doing. Responsible magistrates and thinking men have decided that the proper method of curing the youthful resister—in almost every ease urged to his resistance by some of his elders

who should know better—is the military Detention Barracks, and we have not yet heard of any better scheme. Generally speaking, the defence laws arc meeting with growing approval, and certainly the administrative authorities have done nothing that we are aware of to warrant the attack now made upon them. In almost every country under the sun it is being recognised that more attention must be paid to the work of training the young men to defend their homes in case of emergency: the truest advocates and promoters of peace are surely those , best prepared for defence, and in their present attitude the so-called “Peace j Council” is on the wrong track.