NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16268, 29 June 1916, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

QUAKERS AND FORCE.

Dealing with the conscientious objector in a recent article. Bishop Welldon quotes an incident from the journal of George Fox. A number of Quakers had their pockets picked and they promptly complained to the justices and pointed out the man. "It would scarcely seem," proceeds Bishop Welldon, "that the founder of the Quakers was wholly averse from invoking the aid of the lawi.e. of force—for the punishment of the thief who robbed him and his co-religionists. But the part which the police play in the defence of personal liberty and property is practically the same as the navy and army play in the defence of national liberty and property. There can be no sort of doubt in any reasonable mind that, but for the forcible resistance which has been offered by the British and allied navies and armies, the Kaiser would be master of Great Britain to-day. If the —conscientious objectors are willing to accept that result, they are not good patriots. If they decline to accept it, they cannot well decry or disparage the navy and the army. It can scarcely be more honourable than it is logical that any citizens should enjoy the full benefits which the State assures to them through the armed forces of the Crown, and yet refuse to take their full share, or any share at all, in the hardships and perils by' which alone those benefits are assured. It appears then that two positions are logically consistent, and two only. One is that all use of force is wrong. But he who holds that view must be prepared to sacrifice without resistance his property, his freedom, his life, and if, need be, the lives of the persons who are dearer to him than life itself. The other is that the punishment of wrongdoing is accordant with the* will of God. But if force is right when it is exercised through the police and the judiciary in the life of a single nation, so must it be right in international life, where the punishment of one sinning nation is indispensable for the welfare of humanity, and the force of arms is the only means of inflicting the punishment."

GERMAN "IDEAS" IN HOLLAND.

A British correspondent in Amsterdam writes as follows of the activities of Von Papen, who, after his expulsion from America, went to Holland on a " general spying" mission:—Complete failure has attended the activities of Captain von Papen in Holland. Von Papen is not only squandering good German money which could be used to better advantage! elsewhere, but he wholly under-rates the Dutch sympathy for the entente. What is known of his dealings even in quarters in sympathy with "kultur" shows that he is handling his nauseous business with a truly German ignorance of conditions and

character in the Netherlands. He started in exeat style. He brought much money from Berlin, and many ""ideas." The money is gone, the " ideas" have faded away, and all that is left of the whole scheme is its ridicule and its all-round ineptitude. The Dutch, like the Americans, will not be bullied, either by Germany or by any German. They resent von Papen's extravagant and, to a certain

extent-, criminal fabrication of a " British invasion" scare, not so much because it caused uneasiness all over the country, but because the mere spreading of such lies is an open insult to Dutch intelligence and patriotism. That von Papen did not leave the country after his falsehood was exploded is comprehensible only to few people here ; but the mere spreading of that "news" almost cost their jobs to von Papen's official henchmen, Herr von Kuhlmann, the German Minister at The Hague, and Herr von Humboldt, the Con-sul-General in Amsterdam.