MILITARY TRAINING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17029, 14 August 1929, Page 9

MILITARY TRAINING

PRESBYTERIANS' VIEWS FURTHER RESOLUTIONS (Per Prese Association.) STRATFORD, last night. At a meeting'of the Taranaki Presbytery at Stratford to-day, resolutions were passed urging tliat the law be altered to permit of exemption from military training being granted to all persons whose objections are certified to by their church', and also urging that alternative service to military training be provided, It was also decided that supporting the decisions of the last three assemblies the conviction of the Taranaki Presbytery is that the military activities of the country should be reduced as much and as rapidly as possible, and that as a step in this direction compulsory military training should be abolished.

To counteract any suggestion that the presbytery was pacifist, the following resolution was'passed: "That while claiming the rights of conscience for its members, the presbytery affirms its loyalty to the Throne and State. During the Great. War the Presbyterian Church did not seek to shelter its members from the implications of citizenship and the presbytery believes; also that occasions may arise justifying a righteous war such as fighting for moral equity, for the resistance of evil, or for the protection of the defenceless."