MILITARY PAGEANTS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 33, 9 February 1927, Page 8

MILITARY PAGEANTS

MOTION NOT SECONDED

"FOSTERING THE WAR SPIRIT"

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. At yesterday's meeting of the Christchurch Presbytery, the Key. V. Robert- j son. moved: "That this Presbytery deplores the undue glorification of militarism in the forthcoming military pageant as contrary to the spirit of the League of Nations, of which this country is a member." A suggestion was made that a missionary pageant should be held to counteract the military show. In proposing the motion, Mr. Bobertson paid a tribute to the many benefits of such a military pageant for its historical interest, its physical value, and the opportunity it gave for aesthetic expression and the fostering of a community spirit; but he deplored the fact that these benefits should be exploited evilly by those peop'lo whose only aim was to foster the war spirit, to rouse the people to a certain state of mind in which commercial interests could get them into a panic, arid so drive them into a war.

"As a Church," said Mr. Robertson, _'we are in danger of public ridicule. Unless we stop regretting this and deploring that, people vjjll get the conception that we are 1? collection of wowsers wasting our time and our breath. Unless we are a good deal more definite in our future actions than we have been in the past we will be held up to ridicule. Usually when we pass a motion deploring something, we just leave it at that and make ourselves ridiculous. A possible counteraction would be a pageant of men maimed in the war, but we can't do that. I suggest that the Church should consider holding a missionary pageant at the same time. Unless we have an alternative plan it is idle merely to denounce, but I do think that the Church should show its mind in this most important matter." The motion remained unseconded.