A QUAKER MESSAGE.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 5

A QUAKER MESSAGE.

| Sir,-The Peace Committee of the Society of Friends (Quakers) at a recent meeting considered the comments in your issue of February 6 on ‘the pamphlet Conscription and You: A Quaker Message-and particularly the accusation that some of the quotations used were "so completely isolated from their context as to be misleading." You had courteously informed our Clerk of the passages that came under this criticism. We have again reviewed these passages and would submit that the judgment passed lacked any real justification. First there is the quotation from St. John Ervine’s The State and the Soul: "The dignity of the individual is a prime principle of Christian faith," etc, In what way that could possibly be misleading we fail to see. Then there is the passage ‘from Harper’s in which Hanson Baldwin quotes an American soldier as saying, "No one knowing the army can describe the standards of morals and habits formed there as uplifting. Quite the contrary," etc. Was that quotation considered out of context? The immediately preceding passage (in Harper’s, March, 1945) gave Hanson Baldwin’s ‘own © conclusion regarding the "benefits of discipline" argument for conscription: "Intelligent and democratic discipline and emphasis on self-control rather than on control by rote or through fear should yield positive results; but this is not the kind of discipline, generally speaking, the army has to-day. This author. has been too closely associated with our armed forces to believe that.’ Thus Baldwin supports the soldier. How then can it be said that the passage was "so completely isolated from its context as to be misleading," Finally, there is the quotation from Professor Robert M. Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, in which he attacked the argument that conscription is democratic: "You cannot put together a system which requires blind | obedience with one which presupposes

independent individual \ action," etc. (Collier's, June 9, 1945). In preparing this passage for the pamphlet we tried to make it clear that we, were claiming the Professor’s support simply on this particular argument. We were careful to cite his further statement "If universal military training can be justified, it can be justified only by reason of military necessity" in order to make it quite clear that we were not claiming his full agreement with our own argument. In so doing we thought we were avoiding any possible misleading implication. We realise your limitations of space, but was it not a little ungenerous, while condemning "some of the quotations," to make no mention of the thesis of the message itself-the contention that conscription is an intolerable tyranny, even when provision is made for those adjudged to be conscientious objectors. The Peace Committee of the Society

of Friends-

JOHN A.

BRAILSFORD

(Clerk).

(We did not condemn any of the quotations, nor do we condemn them now. We Said that some were too brief and some too far removed from their context. In other words, we suggested that the compilers of the booklet, remembering that the devil when it suits can cite Scripture, would have been wise to give some of the ormation they give now,-Ed.)