AS INJUSTICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 262, 3 April 1914, Page 4

AS INJUSTICE.

We. must confess to an inability to see either fairness or consistency in the decision of the Magistrate in the Court yesterday in the case, in which he refused to allow costs against the Defence Department for bringing a charge of nonattendance against a Territorial it could not sustain. It was proved that the nou-atteiuliuiee of the Territorial was caused by no fault of his, but by that of the Department. It was also shown that the Territorial was no shirker, but one who took a keen interc.t in his soldiering work. The Magistrate, however, refused to allow costs, on the grounds that the charge was due to an '•oversight" on the part of the Department. To the ordinary mind, that is a good anil sound reason for allowing costs. The Department should be made to pay for its carelessness, as an ordinary person would be. It should not be excused, but penalised. The Magistrate would have been well within his rights had 'he admonished the Department for having brought the charge in question and putting the young man to the inconvenience and expense and unpleasantness-' of appearing in Court to answer a charge that should never have been laid. The Department slimild have been made to apologise for its lapse, and not allowed to go scot-free. Even the Defence Department is not sacrosanct, and it will be a bad day for the defence system when niagistates hold otherwise. We hope the Department will be more careful in future, and not bring charges without careful enquiry beforehand, for to act as it has done in this case is calculated to discourage its best material and to alienate, the support and sympathy of the community behind the defence movement.