A CENTRE OF PROTEST.

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

A CENTRE OF PROTEST.

The last number of the “Round Table,” an Empire review that is establishing a place for itself in all tho King’s dominions, makes the statement that Christchurch is tho centre of the agitation in New Zealand against the principle of universal service. The city, it says “has often been distinguished by a brilliant and aggressive but doctrinaire radicalism and has now been made the headquarters of the Anti-Militarist Council.” It certainly is a rather strange fact that Christchurch is able t-o muster some hundreds of objectors, most of thorn, by the way, being under no liability to serve, while other parts of the dominion cannot provide enough anti-militarists to form a “demonstration ” having any semblance of strength. But on the oilier hand our city has produced some impressive vindications of tho Defence Act. The Rev R. S’. Gray was one of the first of tho dominion’s clergy to present a reasoned justification of the theory that liability for service in tho cause of national defence should be universal, and wo are glad to see that his views have been endorsed by another sturdy Christian in the person of the Rev E. 0. Blamires, of the Wellington Central Mission. “ It appears to me,” wrote Air Blamires the other day, “ that compulsory military training, as now enforced, does not compel a man to fight where conscientious convictions would provent him. It lays a man under no obligation to enter a campaign nf attack upon another nation, but is a safeguard to con*plete our preparations for defence in case of

hostile invasion of our shores.” Mr Blamircs realises, as our anti-militarist friends ought to do, that in the case of a grave national necessity tho reply to a call to arms would be practically universal, and lie draws the logical deduction that a refusal to prepare for a service that every loyal citizen may some day desire to render liis country is an entirely wrong way of expressing a conscientious conviction that war is an evil thing. We all share that conviction, of course, but wo are none the less bound to admit tile possibility of our nation being compelled to fight.