AIMS OF FREEDOM ASSOCIATION

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 198, 17 May 1940, Page 11

AIMS OF FREEDOM ASSOCIATION

Enthusiasm For Democracy WARTIME LEAD SOUGHT FROM CHURCHES Dominion Special Service. NAPIER, May 10. “If the Labour Government were as free from outside influence and control as the Freedom Association is free from control by ‘big business,’ then half my job would go overboard at once,” said Professor R. M. Algie, in outlining the aims of the Freedom Association at a meeting in Napier. The association, he said, was formed two years and a half ago by four men in Auckland; later 25 men banded together and agreed to contribute sufficient to keep it going for 10. years. “The association is not tied to big business; I wish to heaven it were for financial reasons,” said Professor Algie. “Our association sets out to do educational work. Our people must be made enthusiastic about their democracy. We should like our youths to leave schools and colleges knowing they are British and knowing why they are proud of it. Being opposed to ‘isms’ that we feel are harmful iu this country, We have to fight in party politics sometimes, but at present we can forget'local politics and assemble as a family.”

Lead Sought From Churches. Professor Algie’s address was mainly devoted to the course of the war and Britain’s war aims. He strongly urged the churches to give the men of the country a lead. Was it permissible for a Christian to go to war aud kill? The churches had not told these men if it were.

“But every wrong act cannot have the same degree of blameworthiness.” lie said. “If I kill a German for wanton destruction, that must be wrong. If by killing - him I prevent him from killing someone else my culpability is not the same. Every airman and soldier really interposes his ' body between the Nazis and mine. In the last war our churches were pacifist at the start and bellicose toward the end; that will not do. A moral principle is an absolute.”

The peace we offer Germany, he said, will be one we would ask for ourselves—settlement by negotiation and by impartial tribunal. Hitter would never accept the peace terms he gave Poland; his peace for us would be domination of the world by the sword.”