Conscientious Objectors
O discuss the case of conVY sctatious objectors is about as profitable in general as to argue with them. Among a hundred people there are usually a hundred different opinions about the function of conscience, the source of it, and its moral and mental content; and if we can’t agree about the thing itself we are not likely to agree about its control. Until last week a prize offered for a really fresh note about conscience would have brought no competitors. Then the Mayor of Wellington made us all see suddenly that we never know how clever we can be till we try. He abolished conscience and its exponents in one simple sentence. It exists, its possessors exist, only when "appropriate tribunals" say so. Your mother bids you brush your hair. You ask why, and get a cuff on the ear. You are young and do not know about tribunals.
Ten years later your country bids you bind on your sword. You are bold and do not ask why. You bind it on and rush into battle. But once in a thousand times you area literal Christian or a Quaker or a Swedenborgian or a Christadelphian and something inside you slows you up. It seems horrible to you to kill or it seems futile or it seems wrong. But you no longer take it to the Lord in prayer. You take it to the appropriate tribunal and are told whether what you feel inside is a prick of cons@ence or the jagged edge of default. We mean of course if you accept the Mayor of Wellington as an authority. If you cannot accept him-well, your only defence now is to remember that the Government does not accept him either, or it would not maintain a camp for your occupation; that Parliament does not accept him, or would not have made laws to cover your case; that neither the newspapers nor the public accept him, or you would get in New Zealand what you perhaps deserve, since you refuse to resist those who are trying to kill you as well as your neighbours, but what public opinion will not permit you to get anywhere under the Union Jack.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 160, 17 July 1942, Page 3
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369Conscientious Objectors New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 160, 17 July 1942, Page 3
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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