The most novel case of a conscientious objection there has been so far in this district cropped up at the Luton Rural District Tribunal on Tuesday [March 14th, 1916] when a young man of 21 appeared in khaki. He was wearing a sergeant's stripes, and it turned out that he is acting as a signalling instructor to the Royal Engineers and is attached to the Dunstable Signal Depot at Houghton Regis.

The Clerk observed that he had sent in a terrific pile of "matter," and the applicant smilingly agreed that it was rather in the nature of an unpublished manuscript, and that it would meet the case if he put his main points.

He had been attached to the Royal Engineers at Cambridge University, where he had been a student in philosophy, and as he held a special War Office appointment as a signalling instructor he came under the Military Service Act. He could have got out of trouble if he had simply attested, and the other people placed in a similar position had attested and been "starred," but he did not attest because, on conscientious grounds, he felt it his duty to make a quiet protest.

He was quite prepared to go on foreign service and was ready to go into the R.A.M.C. in France, but his position was that he felt it was against the whole trend of his life's beliefs and principles to take part in the actual taking of life.

He did not, however, agree with most conscientious objectors in that he felt he must identify himself with the sufferings of the nation, and therefore he was quite prepared to take part in any non-combatant service at home or abroad.

It was elicited that the applicant was quite ready to serve either in the R.A.M.C. or in mine-sweeping, and this, it was remarked, showed his bona-fides, because min-sweeping was the most dangerous occupation of all.

He said he could produce plenty of witnesses as to his lifelong conscientious beliefs, but he was told that what he had said was quite sufficient, and he was passed for non-combatant service.

[The Luton Recorder: Monday, March 20th, 1916]