GERMANY HIS COUNTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24630, 11 June 1941, Page 6

GERMANY HIS COUNTRY

CIVIL SERVANT'S REFUSAL TO SERVE QUESTION OF EMPLOYMENT (Special) WELLINGTON, June 10. An inquiry whether the Government intended to retain irt its employ civil servants who objected to performing military service was contained in an urgent question which Mr W. J. Broadfoot (Opposition, Waitomo) addressed to the Acting Prime Minister, Mr Nash, in the House of Representatives this afternoon. "Will the Minister say whether Ernest Jakob Volz is to continue in his employment as an accountant's clerk in the Land and Income Tax Department after declaring, according to the press, to the Armed Forces Appeal Board in Wellington yesterday, that he regards Germany as his own country, and that he could not bring himself to fight against the Germans? " Mr Broadfoot asked. Mr Nash replied that civil servants, like everyone else who appealed on conscientious grounds, and whose appeals were sustained, were required to perform alternative service of some kind. In the particular case mentioned he was having full inquiries made. He would say that on the facts stated they could not have men of that type who would not serve New Zealand to the full inside the civil service.—(Cries of "Hear, hear!")