TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20465, 4 April 1938, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Salutes and Children Two years ago an eleven-year-old Pennsylvania boy was ordered by his teacher to salute the American flag. “If you kill me, I won’t do it!” cried the lad in a frenzy, and was expelled from school, says the Literary Digest. Last year, in Massachusetts, another teacher thrashed two little felloAvs and their sister, all between 6 and 9 years old, because they, too, refused to salute. A county court sent them to training school for further punishment. In the past several days, at scattered spots in Pennsylvania, Georgia and New York, terrified children of Amish-Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses, religious sects which oppose salutes as “idolatry,” have been in new clashes Avith school authorities. In Philadelphia the beAvildered children won their first A'ictory. Federal Judge Albert B. Maris came to the defence of two youngsters expelled from a Minersville school for refusing to salute the flag on the ground that “tribute could be given only to God.” “You can't expel them for that,” was the pith of the judge’s ruling, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He held that refusing for conscience’s sake to salute the flag was “within the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.” “It is silly to think you can kick people into patriotism,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “The issue is purely one of conscience. We may think their notion that it is wicked to salute any symbol is ridiculous, but it is no more ridiculous than the belief of certain school authorities that American liberties can be safeguarded by punishing some poor child for refusal to give an outward sign of homage, eA*ea > irhftn there is lovaltv at heart.”