Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 17, 1913. SCHOLARSHIPS AND SHIRKERS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 64, 17 March 1913, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 17, 1913. SCHOLARSHIPS AND SHIRKERS

. The evidence that there is something in the air of Christchurch which is fatal to soundness of judgment on the defence question continues to accumulate. The Rev. J. J. North during his residence in Wellington had nothing to say against the movement for compulsory military training, or the legislation in which it resujted, or the methods by which it was enforced. It might indeed have been safely inferred from his general attitude to public questions that he must have regarded this matter as one in which it was the duty of the guardians of the law to enforce it as they found it, and of the opponents of the law not to disobey the law but to get it altered. Yet no sooner does the Rev. Mr. North remove to Christchurch than he indulges in one of the most vehement and unbalanced attacks to which the administration of the training scheme has been subjected. The request of the Education Department that in awarding free places and scholarships the Boards should consider whether the candidates have Compiled with the obligations of the Defence Act is compared by Mr. North to a re-enactment of the Test Acts ! We are amazed that such a comparison should be made by one who does not declare war upon the Defence Act itself. If there is any oppression in the matter, it iSyStiYely rather in the law which prescribes fines, military detention, and imprisonment, with the possibility of disfranchisement and disqualification for public employment, as the punishment for disobedience than ir the administration which deprives o&sridw* of special educational privileges,

Wo can understand the thorough -going fanaticism of the Christchurch antimilitarists, ti> whom the whole training scheme is as a red rag to a bull. But we cannot understand why a man, who apparently approves of the law as it stands and certainly believes that law as law should be respected should suddenly be moved to violent denunciation because a discrimination is to be exercised against the law-breakers in the bestowal of free places and scholarships. Of Buch law-breakers, the Rev. Mr. North apparently considers, are heroes and maTtyrs made. A man mußt be sadly out of touch with the realities of the case who does not ses that you are not so much making heroes and martyrs by enforcing the law a«J encouraging shirking and disobedience and anarchy by failing to enforce it. For every martyr that has troubled the military authorities there have been at least a hundred shirkers. As to the former, if he is not sufficiently protected by the conscience clause in the Defence Act there is not the slightest reason why the Education Boards should not relax in his favour the discrimination proposed by the Department—if they can find him. But why should a hundred shirkers be encouraged for' the sake of a single martyr who, as we say, might be specially provided for, but will hardly turn up once a year anywhere but in Christchurch? 'Another sample of the Christchurch style is provided by the action taken by the Canterbury Education Board with regard to the Department's circular. Rejecting the report of a committee which urged that "the enforcement of the obligations of the Defence Act does not come within its proper jurisdiction"— a ground which, though in our opihion mistaken, was at least arguable and respectful— the Board decided that the letter should be received. We are surprised to see that so staunch and level-headed a man as Mr. C. A. C. Hardy should have taken the responsibility of proposing a course bo discourteous, bo evasive, and bo opposed to the public welfare. It is, however, consoling to find that the air of Christchurch does not cover the whole of Canterbury. From Ashbur* ton comes quite the best resolution that, the Department's circular ha* produced. With only a single dissentient the Ashburton Technical Classes' Association resolved that "the youth is heir to the country in which he lives, claims, and enjoys his rights and privileges of citizenship; and if he refuses to take his part in defence of these, he forfeits his rights to continue his education at the cost ot the State which he is unwilling to support or defend." This is, delightfully thorough. It does, indeed, go further than the case requires, for nobody proposes to deprive the anti-military shirker of the elementary education that will prevent his becoming a burden to the State. But the general lines of the resolution are sound. It is quite refreshing to find an educational authority insisting that in this case the obligations of the State and the privileges of the pupil do not cover the whole ground, and that to such an authority the lawlessness of its proteges should not be a matter of entire unconcern. We do not think that the youthful shirker is likely to learn by means of a free place or a scholarship any more valuable lesson than the lesson in public duty which his exclusion from those privileges, by Teason of his shirking, would convey.