PLACE COUNCIL MEETINGS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25936, 17 October 1949, Page 6

PLACE COUNCIL MEETINGS

COMMENT ON REPORT TO SYNOD In reply to the Rev. I. L. Richards, chairman of the Christchurch Diocesan Public and Social Affairs Committee, which in its report to Synod criticised the Peace Council, Mr C. F. Saunders, chairman of the Canterbury Peace and Anti-Conscription Council, said the council had been formed to organise a contribution to peace from the area which it covered. It had never attempted the scope' nor nursed the ambition of saving the world from its evils, although members had been willing many times to listen patiently to the prescription offered by Mr Richards’s associates. The consternation, if any, was among those who realised that their technique of diversion and liquidation, conscious or unconscious, was not unrecognised, said Mr Saunders. One of the clerics had moved a resolution at a public meeting, which was carried unanimously, which would have made a suitable preamble to a constitution or, indeed. No. 1 of the objects. However, when this proposal was advanced in the council he had backed away from it. As the situation moved from the more-or-less abstract to the decidedly concrete through the conscription Proposal, Mr Richards and his friends had been among the missing. “But there were ministers of religion who did not stand aside when the test came,” concluded Mr Saunders.