CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18143, 8 July 1919, Page 6

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

MR N. GOLDSBUIIY’S LECTURE. A public lecture was delivered in the Trades Hall by Mr N. Goldshury last night, under the auspices of the Conscientious Objectors’ Fellowship. There was a fair attendance. Mr A. Borrowos, who occupied the chair, said that the Conscientious Objectors’ Fellowship had been formed with the object of fighting militarism. Conscientious objectors were coming out of prison almost weekly, and the organisation was intended to absorb them and to work for the release of those still in gaol. A series of lectures was planned, and the meeting was intended to kill two birds with one stone —to arouse tho interest 'of tho public and to raise finances in order to help on the fellowship’s work. Mr Goldshury said that the point of view he would present would ho that of a conscientious objector. Probably it would be biased, but those who stood for militarism were ns biased as he was. It seemed to the conscientious objectors that freedom of Conscience was the foundation of political and individual freedom- There was to them a higher law than the law of the State, and they were prepared to stand by it. Tho whole principle of war was wrong. When one had been directly subject to the methods of tho Government for tho enforcement of the laws, one looked upon the matter from a different light than did the ordinary citizen who did not clash with them. Tho system by which the Government treated those who broke the law was had. Very little go’od could be seen in it. When one had experienced it, the fallacy of its application by the Allies to tho nations they had conquered was apparent. In this system or keeping order, both internally and externally, the men who were keeping order were compelled to do things contrary to their better natures. When it was necessary to compel men to do these things, it seemed to him very wrong. War, force, coercion, was not the way to settle great questions. It seemed to him tho result of the system under which society was at present living. The competitive element in it made the resort of the State to force more or less a natural one. The struggle for individual and national economic power naturally made for war. A great deal had been heard about the League of Nations. Its constitution embodied the principle of the enforcement of pence. To make it successful, it should take to itself power to so organise the economic forces of tho world that they could bo used for the benefit of the people. As long as they relied on coercion for settlement of moral, economic and religious questions they would never settle them. That was where tho Peace Treaty failed. Coercion tvas the antithesis of peace. The principle behind the Peace Treaty must be one quite different from that of coercion. War would never he ended by war. They had been told that the war was fought for the abolition of' war, and tho safety of democracy. Ho very much doubted whether any such thing would result. Class barriers must be done away with, and the only way they could be done away with was through a spirit of Co-operation and brotherhood. A lasting peace could only result from principles of brotherhood and of economic 'order, as opposed to economic power. As long as the principles of brotherhood were overridden in deling with nations, so long would a lasting peace be impossible. After the lecturer had answered a number of questions he was accorded a vote of thanks.