COMPULSORY TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 54, 1 September 1913, Page 7

COMPULSORY TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA

1 m BISHOP FRODSHAM AND CRITICS ALLEGED "CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE." (By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.) LONDON, 30th August. Dr. Frodeham, formerly Anglican Bishop of North Queensland, in the Nineteenth Century and After, replies ft© the Rev. Mr. Richards, of the Collinsstreet Congregational Church (who alleged that there existed a "conspiracy of silence' 1 ( on the part of the military authorities and the press with regard 1 to the Defenca Act), and admits that the Society of Friends, the Congregationalists, and the > Baptists pa&.ad condemnatory resolutions against the scheme, but states that their opposition sometimes passed beyond what was usually associated with religious thought. It even became super-political, and made excursions into naval and military science. Baptists and Congregationalists, according to the Bishop, form 3.84 per cent, of the "^ population, against the Presbyterians', Methodists', and AngUcana' 65.89, or, with Roman Catholics added, 84.45, while the fate of the dissenting motions and the passing of supporting resolutions in the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist Assemblies and Synods led to the unavoidable conclusion that the weight of religious thought is in favour of the Defence Act. [On 26th June, at the annual meeting of the National Service League, Bishop Frodsham detailed the Australian military system, and said that prosecutions under the Act wpre rather fewer than under the Public Instruction Act«. The # majority of religious bodies in Australia favoured the Act. Later, the Rev. Mr. Richards wrote a letter to the Daily News traversing Bishop Frodsham's statement. He said that "a sinister feature of Australian militarism was the association of the press with the military authorities, by which the majority of the papers engaged in a conspiracy of silence regarding the growing opposition to the Defence Act. Mr. Richards censured the baneful influence of ecclesiastical "Jingoes."]