Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JUNE 11. 1945 TREATMENT OF MILITARY DEFAULTERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 11 June 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JUNE 11. 1945 TREATMENT OF MILITARY DEFAULTERS

WHAT to do with military defaulters is a thorny problem. There are in detention camps about' 700 reservists wjio have refused to’take part in the war, who have failed to satisfy prop-erly-constituted tribunals of the genuineness of their conscience objections and who have been kept in more or less close confinement since they were convicted of an offence against the law. These camps are costffg the taxpayers money and the inmates have done very little, if anything, in return for their keep or to add to this Dominion’s war effort. While their contemporaries have been lqsing life and limb and while those on the home front have been bending their backs to toil, the defaulters have been only obstructionists, causing mostly trouble and exercising a productive capacity inferior to that of ordinary gaol prisoners.

Defaulters are persons whose claim to exemption from military service on the grounds of conscience has already been examined and rejected. As citizens of New Zealand they do not acknowledge that it is their first and bounden ’duty to serve their country when it is in peril. They feel themselves exempt from such an ementary loyalty. Without this simple patriotism on the part of the overwhelming majority of the people of United Nations, where would we be now? Postulate the by no means improbable eventuality that, blit for the decisive intervention of United States armed force in the Pacific, New Zealanders to-day would be squirming under the heel of the barbarous Japanse. How would the defaulters and their friends and relations be 'faring, unless they took advantage of the opening for quislings?

If defaulters are -honest with themselves the few would not consent to go on living under the protection of a country which has beeh saved by the blood and sweat of the many ; or, if they do, conscience surely would not allow them to accept any treatment which would confer advantages over the men who have fought. In holding the beliefs they do, or pretend to hold, these people are often the victims of their environment and upbringing. Somewhere in their short journey through life they have picked up the germ of belligerent pacifism and disloyalty ; perhaps from a handful of teachers—sectarian or secular —who have sedulously fostered such a crooked type of thinking: perhaps from living in communities (they exist in Nelson district) which preach this kind of attitude as a form of religion. Genuine conscientious objection of long standing is entitled to some respect and that has already been conceded to those in New Zealand who can prove their sincerity. The others,,

to whom the Government now proposes to show a measure of indulgence, have been stubborn and there is the unwholesome implication that they, like some other sections of the community, have banked on the contention that, if they held out long enough, the war would end; public opinion would relax into apathy and the Government, with a natural complexion sympathetic towards objectors, would relent. Does disobedience pay in the long run in this country? That is the question many reasonable people will be asking. There would be merit in the Government's action if it set these defaulters to do useful work under disciplined direction at rates of pay certainly no higher than those given the private soldier. This does not appear to be the principal purpose behind the establishment of appellate one-man tribunals by order-iu-council contrary to the recommendation of a Parliamentary Committee. It can be construed as a means of giving at least some defaulters their freedom before the war is over and a device for showing clemency to those towards whom some members of Cabinet have had a fellow-feeling right through the war. They apparently think the time has come to give it administrative expression.