EQUIVALENT SERVICE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15900, 11 April 1912, Page 6

EQUIVALENT SERVICE.

The new Minister of Defence has made it clear that ho intends to enforce the Defence Act without fear or favour and his firmness will bo approved by the great majority of the people of tho dominion. But Mr Myers recognises that in one respect tho operation of the Act has taken an unforeseen turn and we are glad to notice that he proposes to provide some other penalty than imprisonment for the youths who refuse to carry their share of the burden of defence. The objectors who have gone to gaol during the last few* months have little real claim upon public sympathy, since their offence in most instances has been an obstinate refusal to pay a moderate fine inflicted for neglect to comply with the demands of the State as to registration. But obviously the requirements of the deience law would be better served by giving the objectors an equivalent service to perform than by inflicting upon them a sentence of a purely punitive character. A compromise of the kind would have the additional advantage of meeting the case of the real conscientious objector, who 'is animated by no mere desire to avoid personal inconvenience, without providing an easy loophole for the shirker. It has been suggested that the youths who will not bear arms should be employed at duties of a civilian character in tho military camps, but this arrangement would not serve its purpose. A Quaker lad, for example, might argue quite honestly that the work of a camp follower, or even of an ambulanco attendant, was semi-military in its nature and therefore was opposed to the tenets of his religion. The situation seems to call for a scheme that will enable the objector to discharge bis obligation to the State in some branch of public service quite apart from the Defence Department. The number of youths to be considered is not large and the task that lies before Mr Myers would seem to be fairly simple. The Post and Telegraph Department or tli9 Public Works Department could provido suitable tasks for a few hundred temporary hands every year, and the u conscientious objector ” who refused to give service corresponding to that required from the citizen soldiers would stand revealed, of course, as an unworthy citizen, devoid alike of the spirit of patriotism and of selfsacrifice. We believe ourselves that within a year or two after its establishment the “ civilian branch ” of the defence service "would contain • only a few score of the dominion’s young men.