OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 6

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

WAR SERVICE (To the Editor). Sir.—Because 1 claim to have some knowledge of mob psychology and the idiocy of mass resolutions at the annual Methodist Young Men's Bible Class Conference. I deliberately passed over the news item in your Wednesday's issue reporting some fatuous decisions of this year’s conference on the issues of peace or war. The letter in today's issue by "A 1914-18 Digger, however, by virtue of its sincerity and directness, encouraged mo to refer to the item in question, and now I hasten to support that “Digger - and warn those callow, imbecilic youths of the Methodist Bible Class Conference that the men of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force will, if opportunity ever oilers, deal with them in a manner befitting such sheer cowardice and jaundiced Christian outlook.

You have my name. Sir. and you are at liberty to pass it on to any Methodist Bible classman who cares to ask for it. I will be happy to meet them, singly or in numbers, to prove in a food old-fashioned British way. the depth of their belief in Biblical teaching. To me. as a volunteer ol the Second Expeditionary Force, the 44 supporters of the two sloppy and inane resolutions carried at the conference are useless, spineless creatures, whose ridiculous mass outpourings are calculated to bring the churches generally to an ever-weakening position. Who are these infants to proclaim any sense of loyalty to a nation? Jesus Christ, the Master to whom they so glibly give lip-service was a Man —not a creature who would for ever try to shelter behind any one of a dozen possible interpretations of a Biblical quotation.

Don't forget. Sir. I'll be in Master- , ton for another few days and await j gladly your introduction to any of j those 41 who are prepared to support | their inept and stupid theories of the faith they profess to believe, with .any decree of physical courage—l am. etc., A 1939 DIGGER. Masterton, January 5.

A reward for one of the oddest, athletic accomplishments on record was bestowed by Catherine de Medici upon a certain merchant who travelled to Palestine (not on a pilgrimage) by walking four steps forward and then three steps backward. When he completed his journey she elevated him to the nobility.