PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1275, 14 March 1918, Page 4

PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.

To the Editor of THE S UN. Sir, —If the ministers of the Presbyterian denomination think it right that the C.O. be exempted from manly duty to his country, because of his particular reading of the Bible, is not the logical result of this extraordinary view that they must also free from blame, and punishment, the Kaiser himself, and his ghastly following, whose religion is Germanism? The head Hun is just as convinced of the nobility of his position as is the C.O. He holds that God backs him up. But for all that, the Kaiser and his fiery “tail" are in the black books of humanity. Is humanity wrong then? Are we to allow the German conscience to flower in aggression and murder? The Hun is the conscientious aggressor. Is his attitude to go unpunished and his madness go unbound because he is obsessed by the belief (derived in some extraordinary way from the Bible) that the Almighty has given Germany a special commission to do as she pleases with the world, regardless of the liberty and welfare of all other folk? When cranks have restored the military bases to the Huns, then only it seems shall we as a nation be roused to see and know our utter unpraeticalness. No frills of fanciful liberty now will soften or disguise the bitter and disastrous facts then. —I am, etc., CAILLACIL