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Going Over The Top: Conscientious

This is a topic that gets unjustifiably reduced down to people getting white feathers thrown at them. Very useful to see more of the actual surrounding discussions and debates.
 
I'm going to continue to chip in with my now standard response of 'Great article! Here's a random fact about New Zealand or Australia!'

This time, I'm putting the blame on the use of a picture of the Wanganui barracks.

34132-pc.jpg



That's a (romanticised) painting of Archibald Baxter, New Zealand's most famous conscientious objector enduring 'Field Punishment No. 1' for his refusal to engage in any support for the war effort whatsoever.

New Zealand treated absolutists even worse than the UK did, possibly because there was an internal security dimension, at least in the minds of the authorities. Some fifteen percent of conscientious objectors were either Irish Nationalists or Maori, chiefly from the Waikato, who refused to serve in an imperialist war. Incidentally, that led to raids on Maori settlements in 1918 in the hopes of forcibly impressing Waikato soldiers.

Baxter suffered more than any other- he refused to be a stretcher bearer or ambulance driver, but any idea that this was cowardice doesn't survive contact with the facts. He was beaten, starved, subjected to the Field Punishment (which, however it was meant to work in theory, was as practiced on New Zealand objectors nicknamed 'Crucifixion',) and was finally diagnosed and discharged as insane, much to his displeasure. There's a story that at one point he and some other objectors were tied up on top of a trench, though I think that may be a myth.

He was still a leading pacifist in the sixties. Very brave man.
 
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