CONSCRIPTION ISSUE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21155, 30 September 1938, Page 15

CONSCRIPTION ISSUE

ATTITUDE OF LABOUR By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, September 29. The view that no man in New Zealand would be conscripted in the event of war until the people had been asked to decid- on the issue was put forward by Mr E. J. Howard, answering a question at Addington to-night. Mr Howard made it clear that he was expressing his own -views. A questioner asked Mr Howard if he would define the attitude of the Government on the conscription issue, which, he said, was “still on the Statute Book.” Would conscientious objection and religious objection be respected? “I am not dodging the issue when I reply that no one member of the Party except Mr Savage, can answer that for the Government, and I really doubt if he could,” said Mr Howard. The questioner: Then fhat seems strange. “I as an individual in common with the other 59 members of the Parliamentary Labour Party cannot commit all the members to a statement on that issue,” Mr Howard said. “I think myself there would be no conscription, but can I say for the Party that-there wou’d be none? I can only say from my knowledge of the inside working of the movment that there would be none. The Labour Party will never climb down from the position it has taken up and I can only say that from my knowledge of the movement. God knows what this may end in ot course. I cannot say for the Government that there will be no conscription, but I can say there will be no conscription of men without the conscription of money. If Old England Is in serious trouble, we will stand by her.” Loud cries dt “Hear, hear.” Attitude to War There was a heated interlude following the interjection of one man who asked Mr Semple at his address at Tai Tapu early this week to define his attitude during 1914-1918. The Minister ultimately silenced the man after being repeatedly applauded for his assertion that the Labour Government would not allow war profiteering. “They insinuate that I opposed war and the British Empire,” Mr Semple said. “That was untrue. I got to grips with the then Government because I was opposed not to war but to the conscription of flesh and blood without the conscription of profits from the wealthy. (Applause). I was opposed to the ruthless profiteering of 1914 and exposed it. I was imprisoned for the things I said in exposing it on the grounds that my attack brought the Government into ridicule.”

The Minister stoutly denied that he was asked to go to the war. When after saying that as a man with five chil-

dren and on £7 a week he had offered half his salary to the widows and orphans of soldiers, an interjector retorted that a man with five children was not asked to go. Mr Semple said he had made the offer on condition that members of the then Government did the same to prove their genuineness. Not one had answered his challenge. “Under the Labour Government no one will be bled white while their sons are bleeding at the front,” said Mr Semple amid enthusiastic applause. There were Jeers at the interjector when he retorted: “No, but you will by taxes.”