WAR AND CITIZENSHIP.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 4 May 1915, Page 7

WAR AND CITIZENSHIP.

SOME MORAL ASPECTS.

At the Methodist Church on Sunday evening Messrs George and Carrstracu: took part in the service. Mr. Carl Strack, who is leaving for the Trentham camp as an officer of the -7th, Reinforcements, sang the solo "Nearer my God to Thee." His brother, who "has recently been teaching in the Patea High School, and is also going in a similar capacity to Trentham s spoke very feelingly and forcefully upon the moral aspects of war, and the duties of citizensnip in connection with it. He said that whilst war was to the individual conscience extremely repugnant, and could not be made to harmonise ideally with the teachings of the Sevmon on the Mount there was a necessity of duty often resting upon the citizen to help his country in the waging of a war where the honor of his country Mas threatened. The supposed departure from the principles of Christ was' apparent rather than real, and was' due to the necessity for making the ideal principle apply to national conditions which were far from the ideal. A kind of Christen anarchy could otherwise be the* only result, for if war were never justifiable, then punishment of a criminal could not logically be justified, and no basis of law could be established in the life of the race. Speaking of the citizen's duty to make his country worthy of the devotion of her soldier.3, he pointed out that history proved that a period .of* war was usually followed by a period of moral decline. Against this they would need to prepare, so that when the end of the war came, they should be ready to withstand, as a nation, the temptation to moral lassitude" which" was sure to come. It. was by anticipating the danger that they could best prepare to overcome it. He believed the alliance with other nations was producing a newer patriotism wider than that which found its centre in one nation only, and this new patriotic spirit would help to a clearer understanding of the relationships between men of all nations, and eventually bring about the establishment in national life of Christ's platform of the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of man.

At the close of tht service the Rev. E. O. Blatmres expressed the good wishes of the congregation towards the Messrs Strack, and presented each with a pocket Testament, as a small memento.