THE KNYVETT CAMPAIGN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 4, 5 July 1910, Page 4

THE KNYVETT CAMPAIGN.

The disinterested enthusiasm which has sent members of the Knyvett Committee travelling round New Zealand on what they regard as a quest for justice is in itself an admirable quality, but we regret to see it so grievously misdirected. Nothing that was said to the meeting in .the Town Hall last night tends to weaken -in any way the opinions which we have previously expressed ,on the case, and there was not a little to strengthen them. There seems to be an utter inability on the part of Mr. Knyvett's sympathisers -to comprehend the nature of the offence for which he was tried, or to suppose that the refusal of the military tribunal to extend tho enquiry into all sorts of interesting but irrelevant side-issues was due to anything but its crass stupidity or incurable bias. "Mr. Knyvett had never had an opportunity to substantiate his charges/ said a member of the Knyvett Committee last night. "The court had told him that it could not consider whether they were true or false ; his offence consisted in his making them." This is very nearly true, but quite far enough from the truth to be utterly misleading. It is not a military offence for an officer to bring a charge against a superior officer, even though it be of a very grave character but it would plainly bo fatal to military discipline if a charge, even of the mildest character, could be preferred in rhetorical and insulting terms. A humble analogy from civil life will serve to illustrate the distinction. A man who has a claim against another is free to make it publicly, and there is no harm in his doing so as long as the subjectmatter is not essentially libellous. But if the. claim, however well-founded and meritorious, is pressed in a menacing and insulting manner, the position is altered. The threats and insulting languagD constitute offences in themselves, and wonld form the subject of enquiry by the Police Court on grounds with which the justice of the original claim would have absolutely nothing to do. If the defendant desired to set up tho merits of the claim as a defence, the Magistrate would of course reply that he was not concerned with. that issue; and that he had only to determine whether the bad language and the threats alleged to have been used by the defendant had actually been nsed. In the case which we have suggested few people but the irate defendant would fail to recognise the justice of the distinction between the merits of the claim and the propriety of the language and the conduct by which it had been supported. Yet, after all these months of agitation, the Knyvett Committee fails to recognise the analogous distinction in the present case. Mr. Peacocke and his colleagues are^horrified that the military court refused to consider whether Mr. Knyvett's charges were true or false, and allege that the court told him that "his offence consisted in his making them." What the court told him, and rightly told him, was that his offence consisted in his . manner of making them. The charges against Captain Knyvett were at the preliminary enquiry :—"(1): — "(1) Act of gross insubordination; (2) bringing a charge against superior officer couched in insubordinate language." At the second enquiry the offence was described as "an act to the prejudice of good order and military discipline," consisting in the writing of the letter to the Minister of Defence in which the charges against Colonel Robin were made. The passages complained of were set out, and included the following :—(1): — (1) "Preventing any possibility of a scandal leaking out to tho public of the want of ta-ct and interference of the cnief of the general staff." (2) "It seems to me that the chief of the general staff has personally gone out of his way to- belittle, discourage, and damp the enthusiasm of the whole of the volunteering movement." (3) "Since these articles have appeared I have been approached by many officers throughout the whole of tne North Island who have had similar experiences of the unwarrantable interference and unexampled officialism of Colonel Robin." Wo are amazed that anybody should have any hesitation in declaring that the toleration of such language as that on the part of an officer towards his superior would be utterly fatal to military discipline. It is surely only the idea that the truth of the charges preferred with this grandiose embellishment of vague and insulting rhetoric should have been investigated by the military court that has blinded anybody to the fact that, whether the charges be true or false, no officer can be allowed to proclaim them in this manner. , • Military discipline, however, does not seem to count for much in the estimation of those who are championing Mr. Knyvett. They profess, as the resolution passed last night expresses it, to be acting for "other persons who may be officially accused of military crimes in the Dominion," as well as for Mr. Knyvett. Yet we believe with our correspondent "Territorial," whose letter we published yesterday, that the sympathy of these possible sufferers, and of the whole force, is with the Government in this matter, and not with the agitators for Mr. Knyvett. But the sympathy cannot be shown by a counter-agitation, because the regulations forbid it. Mr. T. E. Taylor, wo regret to see, attacked the whole military business last night in an absolutely unjust and mischievous manner, Why should wo have a "mimic

army on .the- European model" ? Why pay a general £900 a year when the same money would support nine families? This is the language not of a statesman or a patriot, but of a demagogue, and is therefore quite unworthy of Mr. Taylor. To calculate tho salaries of a Nelson or a. Wellington, a Roberts or a Kitchener, in terms of old-age pensions, and hold up the recipients to scorn accordingly, might inflame the jealousy and the cupidity of the ignorant, but can *rye no honourable and useful end. That the Knyvett agitation should summon such passions to its aid is- but another proof that it is doomed to failure in a country which realises at last that old-age pensions, free speech, and everything else depend ultimately upon the power and the will pf it 9 citizens to defend it.