REASONS GIVEN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 62, 11 September 1945, Page 6

REASONS GIVEN

DEFAULTER'S LOST APPEAL O.C. PALMERSTON N., This Day.

The unusual course of publicly giv-* ing his reasons for refusing a militarydefaulter's application for release from detention on parole was adopted by the No. 2 Revision Authority (Mr. W. H. Woodward, S.M.) yesterday, when he dismissed an appeal by' Owen Robert McKirdy, wool sorter, of Timaru.

"You have a number of favourable references from people who believe you to be sincere, and it is partly because of that fact that I am stating my reasons for refusing your application," Mr. Woodward stated.

McKirdy admitted a breach of the regulations of the detention camp by giving uncensored writings to a visitor to take away, said Mr. Woodward, and this breach was mentioned- in the appellant's opening statement without his being questioned about it, suggesting that he did so to anticipate a reference to it by. the Crown representative.

"You say that at the time you knew you did wrong and confessed the matter to God, asking for His forgiveness, but you did not confess to any of the camp officers until you were found out," he continued. "I usually treat a simple breach of the censorship regulations as of no weight in itself in deciding whether an applicant is entitled to release. In your case .there are circumstances which, cause" me to take a different view."

The uncensored -matter included some rough pencil sketches in rather coarse taste, although, Mr. Woodward said, he attached no importance to them, whoever had made them. There were some verses which the appellant said he did not compose, but had copied. In their- heartless ridicule of the soldier "gasping his last mean breath" on the battlefield, their offensive references to the dead, and their conclusion that a man would be a fool "to leave a comfy conchie camp" to join the Army, these verses—which apparently had the appellant's approbation—suggested that he was one of those who were in detention because it was safer there, and not because, of a. conscientious objection to war on Christian grounds. A long extract in McKirdy's handwriting from a book named by the appellant was among the uncensored matter given to the visitor to take out of camp. The Authority said he had not seen the book and that it might have been a scientific one, although judging from the context of the extract he felt that it was a pseudoscientific book to disguise its salacious tendency. The appellant, said Mr. Woodward, professed to.be a Christian, to have "appropriated by faith the Salvation of God," and to have the intention of spending his life as a missionary to the heathen. "The contrast between your actions and your professions inevitably casts grave doubts upon the sincerity of your professed conscientious objection to participating- in war," concluded Mr. Woodward "Your application is refused."