Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Archibald Baxter 1888-1970 NZ conscientious objector WWI Sun 25 Feb 2018, 18:16
For Caro.
I saw this afternoon the film "Field Punishment I" from 2014. Unfortunately I didn't find the full movie, unless it was a dangerous link with warning from my anti spyware... But here the trailer:
What wonders me that in NZ you could be conscientious objector, but only if yu was member of a faith organisation as the Quakers and all that, but if you were a conscientious objector without "belief" in any belief you couldn't be with your conscience (whatever that is?) objecting to the service and yu were condemned to go to the front. At least as I understand it from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Baxter
One anecdote as it was on Belgian soil near Ypres that he was sent, they speak everywhere about the name Doudredoum near Ypres...and you know me...I didn't rest before I...and at least I found something in Reningelst...de brewery: "De ouderdom" (the age)
http://www.wo1.be/nl/db-items/grootebeek-british-cemetery And due to this link, there was also a Hamlet: "de ouderdom" And see now if we pronounce "d'ouderdom" in West-Flemish, it is exactly pronounced as the English word "doudredoum"
PS and even in that time the world was already small, the New Zeelanders fighting at the other "end" of the world in Flanders' fields...
Kind regards from Paul.
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
What wonders me that in NZ you could be conscientious objector, but only if yu was member of a faith organisation as the Quakers and all that, but if you were a conscientious objector without "belief" in any belief you couldn't be with your conscience (whatever that is?) objecting to the service and yu were condemned to go to the front.
The problem the military authorities had, and not just in New Zealand but in Britain too, was sorting out the "genuine" conscientious objectors from the cowards or "malingerers" to use a term common at that time. If you could demonstrate that you had a long-term religious objection - say perhaps you could prove you had been active as a member of the Quakers for a good number of years - your case was likely to be viewed more seriously and tolerantly than if you just said that you didn't really agree with the war and so could you be excused. Many Quakers, and other conscientious objectors, of course while still refusing to fight, did still serve at the front as ambulance drivers, or medics.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
I understand that in that time there were still old fashioned thoughts of honest behaviour of the nation state and fighting for the "fatherland", and acting otherwise was seen as cowardice against the own "folk" and in fact as insane. In the film the doctor sends Baxter back to NZ with the excuse of "insanety", for his own good. In that context I understand it too, that if one had a history of conscientious objector as part of his religion, it was better received as valid, while in that time, religion was still a big part of society and people, especially the army couldn't understand that a person without religion could also have a "personal" conviction not related to God or whatever against warfare. In that time the religion and the government still heavy intertwined and supporting each other. In the WWII, it was in my humble opinion, quite another time, a clash between ideologies, Fascism against Bolchevism and the democratic countries a bit in between, some more leaning to one side some leaning to the other side.
Kind regards from Paul.
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
All that you say is very true. In WW1 loyalty to one's religion and to one's mother-country, were still powerful and deeply-rooted concepts, largely accepted by most people unquestioningly. Even now, in many countries, apostacy and atheism are considered worse crimes than simply being born into a different religion than the majority. And there are of course still many people in secular western countries that argue that religion should maintain a very prominent role in modern society because it is, they claim, the unique font of all morality. The flip side to that idea is of course the implicit suggestion that those who profess not to believe in God or indeed any god, are somehow intrinsically immoral and not to be trusted. I'm not sure what the situation is in Belgium, but in Britain the universal requirement in a Court of Law that one swears on the Bible, "to tell the truth, the whole, truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God", was only changed fairly recently.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Thanks for your interesting reply Meles meles. I learned from it.
"I'm not sure what the situation is in Belgium"
It's a complicated one...in principle the state is neutral and separated from religions... The full explanation with all the details, but I read only the essential for our question...interesting the atheists are also recognized and subsidized as a body...in fact they are treated as a religion ... Read further about the problems with the Muslims and the headscarf...
...interesting the atheists are also recognized and subsidized as a body...in fact they are treated as a religion
The bastards! Even in religious Norway "they" are seen as a race apart who might actually make more sense than the so-called religious "status quo". But note that MM was talking about 100 years ago (wishfully longer, but such is mathematics).
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
...interesting the atheists are also recognized and subsidized as a body...in fact they are treated as a religion
The bastards! Even in religious Norway "they" are seen as a race apart who might actually make more sense than the so-called religious "status quo". But note that MM was talking about 100 years ago (wishfully longer, but such is mathematics).
nordmann,
am so happy to have you once ("uit uw kot gelokt te hebben") drawn out of your "den?" (tent)
Paul, I have been away or busy recently, but the Baxter family are very well-known in NZ, less for Archie Baxter than his son, James K Baxter, one of our best-known poets, who also lived am unconventional lifestyle setting up a commune society at a place called Jerusalem. (I think it was named that before he went there, but I am not sure.) Archie persuaded his brothers to become conscientious objectors so the whole family supported these ideals, though I don't think they were Quakers or anything like that. I think his brothers (there were 7 boys in the family) were either not called up or just served their time here.
I read a book last year by Archie's wife Millicent, who was herself the child of very famous (in NZ) parents, John Macmillan Brown one of the founders of Canterbury University College and Helen Connon the first woman in the British Empire to take an honours degree. I think they were teacher and pupil.
She said in one paragraph: "The Baxter brothers were farmers. They were convinced that war, any war, was totally wrong, and that they should have no part in the war machine. They hadn't always held this belief. Archie as a young man, adventurous, had actually thought of enlisting for the Boer War. Then he heard a lawyer lecturing on what was really happening, and what war was really like, and he gradually worked out his pacifism and socialism.
He was quite alone to start with, a loner among ordinary conservative farming people, and in touch with no one of similar beliefs. His own family at first thought his pacifism foolish, but they gradually came round to it, particularly when the Labour Party put forward pacifist views. Keir Hardy came to New Zealand in 1912 and Archie greatly admired him - our son Jim was named James Keir Baxter, But Archie really worked it all out for himself and convinced his family."
Archibald Baxter's autobiography, We Will Not Cease, is better known than Millicent's. This year our bookclub is possibly reading a novel based on her life.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
And another small question: when you wrote: our son Jim was named James Keir Baxter??? The son of you and your husband? And can you have in New Zealand such a long name...? or misread I the sentence completely?
No, that was Millicent Baxter writing about her son. In NZ you can have names as long as you like, as far as I know. Certainly giving children 3 Christian names is not uncommon though the norm is for 2. (I don't like using the term 'Christian names' but I am not sure of another term for it: 'first names' doesn't seem to cut it, and 'pre-names' isn't right either. My dictionary suggests 'forenames'.)
But in this case Baxter is the surname. Maori names can be many syllables and quite descriptive. (Though nowadays they are usually shortish and often transliterations of English ones.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Of course I read the two paragraphs apart and thought that you were speaking again in the second paragraph. But as I read it now, it is obvious that the two paragraphs are from Millicent and that I misread the whole thing
As for forename (Dutch: voornaam), they translate it in my Dutch-English dictionary with "first name". Although, I think it was on a flight to Istanbul Turkey, that I had to fill in to enter the airport my "christian name" and my "surname" . Of course that was the Ataturk time, I don't know if in the Erdogan more islamic Turkey...
And here it are also mostly two first names, just in a few cases three...I mean from the Belgians "de souche", who live here already for some century, although one has among these oldies already also German, Spanish, Italian, even Russian people and people from Eastern-Europe.
Hi Paul, Just now I see in the birth notices a boy called Amanaki Jr Beauden Taituuga - those are all his first names; there is a (Samoan or Tongan) surname after that.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Hi Paul, Just now I see in the birth notices a boy called Amanaki Jr Beauden Taituuga - those are all his first names; there is a (Samoan or Tongan) surname after that.
Thanks again Caro. Still up (here nearing midnight) for LiR's "The Famous Five"... Yes but here in Belgium, because your Tongan or Samoan first names are probably traditional first names, it is a complete chaos, everybody competes for the most extraordinary first names. Coincidentally, there was a list of the twenty most used ones today in the paper. And there was no single one, I repeat no single one, that I recognized. Really disturbing for oldies as I. Will have to memorize them with seeking equivalent words in "our language" , to memorize the sylables...
Kind regards, from Paul.
PS; just out of curiosity, is it now nearing noon at your house or is it now 11 PM?
No, that was Millicent Baxter writing about her son. In NZ you can have names as long as you like, as far as I know. Certainly giving children 3 Christian names is not uncommon though the norm is for 2. (I don't like using the term 'Christian names' but I am not sure of another term for it: 'first names' doesn't seem to cut it, and 'pre-names' isn't right either. My dictionary suggests 'forenames'.)
But in this case Baxter is the surname. Maori names can be many syllables and quite descriptive. (Though nowadays they are usually shortish and often transliterations of English ones.
"Forename" is normal usage in the United States, though as I understand it, this is to spare the feelings of Jews rather than atheists.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3328 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Are you a new member, MikeS8, or have you just not posted for some time. If you are new to the board, welcome. I've come across "Forename" on forms in the UK in recent years.
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