NON-COMBATANT SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 99, 26 April 1917, Page 6

NON-COMBATANT SERVICE

The religious objector continues to give a certain amount of trouble, though the statutory requirement that his objection to military service shall have been proved before the war by his membership o£ a religious body whose tenets condemn such service as opposed to Divine revelation has severely circumscribed his activity. The case reported from Napier yesterday illustrates the tangled problems in logic and psychology from which the Military Service Boards have been relieved by this rigid limitation. " The State has decreed," wrote this Napier objector, " that I shall aerve in a machine, a so-called engine of liberty, which was a means to this end— the training of our young men to slaughter their fellow human beings." It has not occurred to these objectors that to save their fellow human beings from slaughter is one of the principal objects of defensive warfare, and that, however lightly they may value their own lives and liberties, to hand over women and children to a fate far worse than death is a strange way of displaying humanitarian and religious principle. It must surely be admitted that, if the Christian test of judging things by thsir fruits be applied, many "a pagan suckled in a cresd outworn " has arrived at conclusions less revolting to humanity and to common-sense than Christians of this way of thinking. Fortunately for the Napier Appeal Board, the merits of the argument were not for them to consider. The objector's long letter was regarded by himself " a^j a protest, not as an appeal." lie had clearly no footing under the Act, and the appeal could not have been granted even if the Board had so desired.

The position of the religious objector who can comply with the statutory conditions to which we have referred has teen considerably eased by the new regulations. The exemption provided by the Act is not from military but from combatant service, and it is expressly declared that ,the exemption shall be subject to the appellant's declaration of his " willingness to perform such noncombatant work or services, including service in the Medical Corps and the Army Service Corps, whether in or beyond New Zealand, as may be required of him." The most uncompromising of those religious objectors have taken up tho position that they cannot even render non-combatant military service, because that would amount to indirect participation in the work of war; and their case is now provided for. No. 5. of the regulations just issued repeats the condition which we have cited as to non-combatant service, but with the noteworthy omission of any refei'ence to the Medical Corps or to the Army Service Corps, or to service beyond New Zealand. Coupled with the declaration in the previous regulation that " a, religious objector shall not be compelled to wear uniform," this change clearly implies the exemption of the religious objector from military service-even of anon-combatant character. The result is that the strictness with which the area of exemption is fenced off is now equalled by the liberality of th© treatment extended to the select few who are able to gain admission. Though the public is scanning every ground of exemption with a more critical eye as the limit of the First Division gradually ■ approaches, no objection, is likely to be raised to the, latest extension if alternative service of a non-military nature is duly provided and strictly enforced in every case. •