PACIFIST SPEAKER SENT TO JAIL

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 199, 20 May 1941, Page 10

PACIFIST SPEAKER SENT TO JAIL

Charge Of Obstructing Police

Found guilty of obstructing Superintendent C. W. Lopdell in the execution of his duty on Friday night, Harold Roy Bray, aged 22, a farm labourer, who was stated to belong to the Christian Pacifist Society, was convicted by .Mr. Stout, S.M., in the Wellington Magistrates Court, yesterday, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Superintendent Lopdell said that on Friday night he went to the reserve between Manners and Dixon Streets where the Christian Pacifist Society usually had a speaker on Friday nights. A crowd or 200 or 300 people were there. Accused stood on a box and began to read from notes by the light of a torch. He refused to cease speaking when witness told him he had prohibited the meeting. Police took him to the edge of the crowd and told him to go away, but he returned, and when he started to address the crowd again he was arrested. “His effort to be arrested was most deliberate,” said the superintendent, who added that he had prohibited the meeting because he feared there might be subversive statements with consequent trouble. . . ‘•This man belongs io the Christian Pacifist Society, an association with a religious name but very subversive purposes.” said the superintendent. ‘lt is significant that this man, and I think a majority of the others who. have been charged, are single men of military age, some of whom have been caught in the ballot, and have failed in their appeals against overseas service. They have come from districts as far away as Nelson and the Waikato. Accused came down from the Waikato to take his turn, he said, in epeaking here. It is noticeable that some of them are not practised public speakers, and it is suggested that they have come here because of their failure to get out of military service and the probability of finding a safe place by being charged and sentenced.” Bray said he would not give evidence but would make a statement. He began to read from notes, and had stated that Christ and war were irreconcilable when Mr. Stout told him to keep to the case, because he was not going to allow Bray to use the Court for propaganda purposes.