LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1941, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Lodge Membership. “The operation of the Governments social security scheme appears to have had a disturbing effect on the membership of friendly societies,” said Mr C. A. Ryder, District Grand Master, in an address to the district conference of Manchester Unity Oddfellows at Auckland yesterday. "During the first year of the country’s experience of the Government’s social security legislation, membership of friendly societies of New Zealand was reduced by 4650, leaving the total in 1939 at 109.059," said Mr Ryder. Il was unanimously resolved that “this conference expresses its appreciation of the good work that the medical officers of the lodges have done in the past and trust- that the happy relations that have existed will continue.’’

Pacifist Speaker Sent to Gaol. The suggestion mat some form of restraint other than imprisonment should be adopted in the case of speakers at meetings prohibited by the police was made by Mr Luxford, S.M., in the Magistrates’ Court, Wellington, yesterday when he was sentencing William Silvester, clerk, aged 27. to three months' imprisonment for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. On a charge of conducting a meeting that had been prohibited by the police under the Public Safety Emergency Regulations lie was committed to the Supreme Court- for trial. Silvester is one of several speakers who have been arrested at the Methodist Memorial. Manners Street, on Friday nights. He denied both charges, which arose out of the same set of circumstances. It was stated by the police that he was a member of the Christian Pacifist Society.