A number of "conscientious objectors" appeared before the Luton Tribunal on Saturday afternoon and asked to be excused from military service. Some of them were employed at munition factories, and they received scant sympathy from members of the Tribunal who took the view that a man whose conscience would not allow him to take the life of another man in battle should not be content to make his livelihood in producing machines of bloodshed for other men to use.

One conscientious objector was a carpenter and joiner in the employ of a firm of Admiralty contractors at a marine station. He wanted exemption from combatant service, but was willing to go to sea as a ship's carpenter in a ship carrying war materials, but not on a warship.

In reply to questions he stated that lately he had been engaged in the construction of gun batteries at an important naval station, but it was only recently he found it was a battery on which he was working. He was then asked whether it was not a peculiar conscience that enabled him to build engines of destruction for other men to use.

Asked when he first found he had a conscience, he said he had it since the beginning of the war. A member of the Tribunal then said it could not be worth much if it allowed him to work all the time making things for the destruction of life. Retained in his group.

Another man who appealed on conscientious grounds described himself as a Christadelphian, and was said to have formerly been a "good Wesleyan". He was working for a firm which since the outbreak of the war has been almost exclusively engaged on work for the War Department. One ofm his submissions was that the Bible told us not to be "bond servants," and that immediately a man became a soldier, whether combatant or otherwise, he became a bond-servant. He was asked not to split hairs when he began to define the Christadelphian principles which caused him to oppose war, and was told to give absolutely tangible facts why he should not become a soldier.

Then he was asked if he did not get his living at the present time through the war. In answer to this he said that although the firm might have been producing goods for the Government he was a civil clerk in the employ of a civil firm, and if he was ordered to do anything which went against his conscience he could at once leave. As to the firm being engaged wholly on war work, without which he could not have got his living, he said they had plenty of private orders, but the War Office would not allow these to be executed.

It was then pointed out by a member of the tribunal that for many months the whole revenue of te company employing him had been derived from the manufacture of munitions of war, and although they did not make shells, they made vehicle to expedite the delivery of shells in the trenches.

The applicant argued his case at considerable length and, judging that he was likely to fail, asked for the Tribunal to state the reasons for their refusal in writing. To this he submitted he was entitled by the Act. This not being promised, he repeated his request - o9r demand - several times, and he was told he would receive the decision of the Tribunal in due course. He still pressed for reasons to be stated in writing, and the Clerk of the Tribunal then said: "You will receive all you are entitled to, no more and no less".

He intimated that in the event of his appeal being unsuccessful he should appeal to the Appeals Tribunal, and wanted to know when his three days' grace in which to do this began - from the day he received the notice, or from this hearing. If the latter, and Saturday, Sunday and Monday made the three days, he would only have Monday to get his appeal form in time. He was told he could have an appeal form on Monday, and replied that unless his employers gave him time off he could not obtain the form in time. To this the Clerk replied that the office was open all day and most of the night, and there was dinner time and other times in which he could apply for his form.

Another objector was a Salvationist. He had been employed for months at a munition works, and said he knew shells were made in the buildings he plastered. It never struck him that if he had a conscientious objection to bloodshed, it was peculiar that he should work at a place where shells were made and take money for it. He was told, he said, to make a conscientious objection. He did not think of it himself.

From the family circumstances, however, it appeared that there would be hardship if this man was taken, as he was the only one of a large family earning much money. Postponed temporarily.

Conscientious grounds and ill health and infirmity were put forward by another man who appealed. He absolutely objected, he said to being made to kill his fellow men, whether German or otherwise, and he would have it on his conscience all his life if he killed anyone in battle. He even had a horror of killing animals or insects, and if he found a spider in his bedroom he would not kill it. He never killed animals or insects or inflicted pain on them, and despised those who were cruel to animals and looked on them as a low type of people.

He was brought up to the Church of England, and then hesitated between Roman Catholicism and Freethinking, and became a Freethinker. The killing of men would be repulsive to his moral and natural sense. "I would not kill anybody if anybody killed me," he said. "I would try to stop them but I would not kill them."

Asked whether, when the men who were now soldiering came back, he would refuse to mix with them, he said: "It would depend on the reason they went." Then it was put to him that every man had gone out deliberately to vanquish the enemy and, although he may not know it, "murderiung" hundreds and hundreds of Germans. "If you have such a repugnance to killing anybody you must abominate these people."

"I do not like the society of soldiers and avoid their society," was his answer. "I do not look on them all as criminals, for I know they look at it from a different point of view. I am broadminded. If everybody held my opinions Germany would never have gone to war."

"If all English people held the same opinion there would have been no war, for Germany would have been over here," was a point he was given to consider.

The applicant candidly confessed that he would not like Germany to win, as they were the worst of the civilised nations of Europe. He did not think, however, that it was possible for them to win, as they were up against the three biggest empires in the world.

"If the Germans came they would not ask you whether you had a conscience," he was told. "The first thing they would do would be to put you in a uniform." Applicant: "There is no likelihood of the Germans coming."

"Supposing the British Army stood down as you are doing now?" he was asked. His application was refused.

A young man appealed on the ground that he had to carry on the business and support his father and mother. He was also a conscientious objector, holding that as a member of the Salvation Army he would be acting against his conscience in going to war.

he appellant knew 30,000 members of the Salvation Army had joined the Army, but he contended these men had left their Salvation principles behind. He agreed that the son of a leading Salvationist officer in Luton had enlisted.

"So opposition to the war is not a cardinal principle of the Salvation Army?" he was asked, but he insisted that Salvationists who went to fight were departing from their principles, although the Salvation Army was founded on the principle of war.

A brother of the applicant, a Salvationist, has attested and is not appealing. "You have no objection to his sacrificing his life for you, but you object to sacrificing your life for him," was the remark made by a member of the Tribunal. "It seems rather a false position, my dear friend."

Postponed to March 31st to enable him to arrange his business affairs.

Another man appealed on both domestic and conscientious grounds. Questioned about his religious persuasion, he said he was originally Church of England, but had since been "all over the place". From this it was inferred that he had been to some of the Nonconformist denominations, but it transpired that he meant he had been to various Established Churches in Luton. Afterwards he went to the Roman Catholic Church, but only for a short time.

"Now I have found the place I want and the people I like," he said. This was in Castle Street, the Friends' Meeting House. Asked how long he had been going there, he said he had not been at all yet, but that was the place for him because they thought as he did. He said he was stimulated to become a Quaker because he thought he might have to die.

He was conditionally exempted, but on domestic grounds only.

[The Luton News: Thursday, March 2nd, 1916]