Moral Blackmail

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 29, 12 January 1940, Page 12

Moral Blackmail

T is to be hoped that we have heard the last as well as the first of the type of recruiting agent who appeared in Christchurch a day or two before Christmas. Since there has been no repudiation of the newspaper reports we must of course suppose that the things telegraphed were actually said; that they were said by the speakers to whom they were attributed; and that they were said seriously. Now, every man who-asks other men to risk their lives for him knows that he is treading on dangerous ground. Unless he is very dull or completely insensitive he will not do it without a deep sense of responsibility. When he does do it he should be praised and not blamed. And the men who did it in Christchurch could be praised if two of them had not gone out of their way to be offensive-one by saying that conscription will be unnecessary "if we have decent women," the other by suggesting "moral blackmail" as a possible aid to recruiting. War is of course a breakdown of reason. We engage in it when logic and commonsense have failed. Even when we are dragged into it by forces which we have not released we have to guard against becoming the thing we are resisting. But there are stupidities and stupidities, and the worst of all stupidities is the belief that every man who hesitates to enlist is degenerate or a coward. We mean, it is the worst of all stupidities but one. There is a higher degree of folly, and that is to express such a belief in the course of an appeal for recruits. Blackmail in law is an abominable crime. Why ask women to commit it socially? If a man hesitates to become a soldier it is quite likely that one of his chief reasons for: hesitation is a woman. It is iniquitous to suggest that if she is a decent woman she will ostracise him until he enlists. No sensible woman did that twenty-five years ago or will do it now. : Before there are volunteers there must be a cause; and although the causes seem so clear to some of us, we must face the fact that the accumulated disappointments of twenty-five years are preventing others from seeing it. The first of all recruiting tasks is to remove honest doubt. The worst of all recruiting methods is to throw mud at those who do doubt.