CONSCIENCE AND LAW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18786, 15 June 1929, Page 4

CONSCIENCE AND LAW.

To tho Editor. Dear Sir,- —Let me praise the entirely admirable and logical letter of “ D. E. K.” in the “ Star ” of yesterday, on the anomaly of trying to ostracise the crew of the Emden while condemn ing two Divinity students to be broken in pocket and shorn of civic rights for ten years. We have a Ilun statute on our law-book, and we are living down to it.; this is the message we arc giving to Europe and the world. Not ofteq does such a sinister juxtaposition of events strike us into realisation of where we are drifting, but ever since that crucifying law was put upon serious-minded young men in the only British country that has yet accepted it we have had continual reminders that we have lost the line between what we confess to be Ctesar’s and what we confess to be God's. I belong to a far from pacifist race, and a far from spineless Church, but that very race and Church, standing as they have throughout the centuries for Christian citizenship and conscience before frpfeaucracy, are getting restive now If “defence” continues to be made a hateful word by hateful judgments, the civil power and the military idea both stand to crumble in a land where a pagan principle is beginning to fester The deprivation of civic rights should be a far commoner sentence than it is, but it should be kept for that disintegrating moral turpitude from which an invaded country has everything to dread, and not for the keen consciences of young men who have dedicated their lives to the Christ-ideal, whether the country breaks them for it or not.—l am, etc., JESSIE MACKAY. Cashmere Hills, June 14, 1929.