“THIS DEVIL’S WORK.”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8441, 29 May 1913, Page 10

“THIS DEVIL’S WORK.”

A “CANDID FRIEND” AND DR McArthur. A resident of New Plymouth has apparently been stirred to the innermost recesses of his soul through tho recent prosecutions of Wellington Territorials who have found tnemselves in the meshes of the law’s net through failing to comply with the provisions of the Defence Act, and in a letter which the outraged resident has indited to Dr McArthur, S.M., he unburdens his soul in the approved language of the “candid friend.” Hie writer, who appends his name to his missive, informs the magistrate that he “wishes to say a few words” to him about “your administration of the Defence Act. I am informed that you have been practising persecution to young men and boys for their alleged neglect of military parades. W'hat you have done iu this matter is deserving of the utmost - condemnation. I consider that a man of your ability ought to know what is morally and equitably right; but it appears you do not. ... It is the duty of a conscientious magistrate to say to fjjo Government, ‘This compulsion is a great injustice, and I, for my part, cannot enforce it. I would rather relinquish my position than commit myself to such iniquity.’ “. . . The inhumanity to man practised by magistrates demonstrates that they are mere automatons, almost destitue of moral and religious character, and expert in all the devil’s handicraft, and like the Unjust Judge we read of in the Gospel, who neither feared God nor regarded man. Sir, I entreat you to wash your hands of this diabolical imposition. I hope if you repeat inis injustice that a guilty conscience may keep you awake through the dark cold nights of this winter.” And then the unconscious humorist adds a post-script denouncing in language as fulminatory in diction and as catholic in conception as that of the Commination Service, all and sundry who enforce the Act. “An abomination,” “a monstrosity,” “a damnable hobby”, are some of the choice epithets he hurls in order to enforce his abhorrence of and detestation for “this devil’s work.”