LEADERS ILL-ADVISED

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21037, 13 February 1940, Page 2

LEADERS ILL-ADVISED

PACIFIST ACTIVITY METHODIST CHURCH OPINION We cannot but feel that the pacifist leaders of the Dominion, among whom are members of our own Church, are guilty of a very ill-ad-vised policy in pursuing their pacifistic propaganda under present cirlumstances,’ says the Methodist Times. “We fail to understand what practical object they hope to achieve. They are straining the patience of the authorities, are causing dangerous public irritation and are markedly alienating the sympathy of their friends.

“ We cannot wonder that the At-torney-General, in the address he gave in Auckland a fortnight ago, rounded a distinct warning note and declared that disloyal and seditious propaganda must cease. The Government, said Mr Mason, was tolerant—and we think their tolerance has been very pronounced—and would remain tolerant of all legitimate comment or criticism on public affairs, but it would not be tolerant of utterances or counsellings that were designed to distract, divide or disturb the people in their prosecution of the stern task to which they had set themselves. And we do not see how it can be questioned that the guerilla pacitistic campaign now being engaged in by certain leaders must definitely have the effect deprecated by the Attorney-General . Nation at Death Grips “ Notwithstanding all the work of our pacifist friends in recent years, and notwithstanding the sincere efforts of honest statesmanship, here is the nation at death grips with an unscrupulous, brutal, relentless tyranny, a tyranny which, if it had its way, would ride roughshod over personal, civil and religious freedom every-v.-here, as it has already done whereever it has had the power. “ Where would the pacifist leaders nc under the Nazi regime—that regime for which so many of them pro-

fess such strange admiration? The Gestapo would long ago have had them in its fell clutches. The coun- | try has a right to ask that pacifism l should refrain from activity during ! the process of the war. I “We believe the Attorney-General, to quote him again, is quite justified in asserting that ‘ the Government and people of this country will not tolerate that freedom shall be per- ; verted to impede the cause of freej dom.’ “ Our pacifist friends, we hold, are 1 grossly abusing their liberty, and we appeal to them to cease so doing. They have no right to cause the tension they are now causing. They are playing the martyr needlessly.”