CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 78, 2 April 1913, Page 6

CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

Arthur Cummings protests agonist the imposition of a non-consumer's water rate on an allotment that he holds nine miles out of the city.

M. Aldls, referring to our subleader of March IS, under the heading, '"The Anti-militarist Spirit," suggests that it is hardly fair to impute the disturbances after tlie recent open-air meeting in Christchurch to the anti-militarists as a body, seeing that in the report of the affair published in the same issue it .is stated that the regularly organised antimilitarist meeting was quiet and orderly, and that the trouble arose through the action of some individuals wlio afterwards addressed the crowd on their own responsibility. "In the second place," he continues, "is not your protest against lawlessness and violence rather belated? The disturbance at Mt. Massey's meeting was neither the first, nor by any means the worst case of the kind that has occurred in recent years in New Zealand; or for that matter in Christchurch itself. Ever since the passing of the Defence Act,the meetings held, in exercise of their undoubted rights as British citizens, by those opposed to that measure, have been systematically invaded, and in many cases broken up, by gangs of , militarist hooligans." After justifying at some length the attitude of the anti-militarists, and claiming a hearing for their views, the writer concludes: "But after all, 'it's a long worm that has no turning,' and. when the anti-militarist finds himself persistently and lawlessly denied the right of free speech, it is not to be wondered at if he sometimes yields to the temptation to try how his adversaries like a' dose of their own Let our militarist friends recognise the fact that a man who opposes compulsory military service may be , as true a patriot and as good a citizen as one who supports it; or, if this is asking too ranch of them, let them at least learn that under the British flag all men have equal lights, however foolish and offensive may be the opinions which they hold; and that violence and insolence are no more jus-. titrable on the part of those who, like themselves, are in the right, -than on the part of those who, like everybody else, must necessarily be in the wiong; iet them exhibit in. their attitude towards anti-militarists a little of that self-re-straint and respect for law of which we hear so much from them, and see so little; and they will have more eight,, and probably less reason, to ■complain of anti-mnitaxist lawlessness."