CLAIMED TO BE GERMAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16435, 11 January 1917, Page 4

CLAIMED TO BE GERMAN

DRAWN IN THE BALLOT. APPEAL FOR EXEMPTION. SILENT REGARDING SYMPATHIES. [bt telegraph.—press association.] CHRISTCHURCH. Wednesday. Before the Military Service Board at Christchureh to-day Frederick Roesler, motor mechanic, of Ladbrooks, appealed on the ground that he considered he was German and he was the only man at home to look after hiz parents. AppelI lant said his parents were German. His I father was naturalised 20 years ago. He j himself was born in New Zealand in I 1878, and had been here ever since. He i had two cousins, officers in the German Army, and another cousin in the German Navy, and he had corresponded with them till the- war broke out. Asked with whom his sympathies lay, he refused to answer. He could speak German. His mother was born in England, of German parents. His father was 74 and his mother 73. One of his. brothers was on a farm, another had left for the front with a recent reinforcement, and a third was working in the country. The chairman said v —'lant was a British subject, and he . not established any ground for exemption. The appeal would be dismissed, but the fact that appellant wag of German parentage and he refused to state with whom his sympathies lay in the present struggle, would be noted, and the military authorities could do with appellant as they pleased.