TEACHERS’ EXEMPTION IN GERMANY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VIII, Issue 213, 10 August 1918, Page 3

TEACHERS’ EXEMPTION IN GERMANY.

I to the editor.! Sir,—Some time ago Mr. J. W. Poynton, the Stipendiary Magistrate, and chairman of the Military Appeal Board, delivered a lecture it Napier on “"Why Germany is so Strong.” Inter alia he asserted that ;ehool teachers in Germany were exempted from military service. His luditors necessarily had to accept his, knowing nothing to the conrary. A Hastings gentleman has (I >elieve twice) challenged this through .our paper, and a returned soldier ias flatly contradicted it in one of zour contemporaries. I would pre;ume to ask Mr. Poynton whether he ntends to ignore these refutations, >r is he prepared to give his authorty for his statements. If he cannot •erify his assertion, he should in ho interests of truth and honour, :onfess his inability, and “plehd piilty” to indulgence in “gratis dieurn.” I submit that a publicly utered mis-statement whether deliberite or otherwise, discounts and lamns a whole deliverance, and that n this instance the effect was preudicial to recruiting, inasmuch as it gave they cue to one or two of our var-winning educationalists to apical for our teachers, which amounts >n]y to class preference.—l am. etc., J. T. FAWCETT. Tlastingsh, 9/8/191S.