Moral Re - Armament

Infiltration

The insidious behaviour of the Moral Re-Armament group (see Salient 6) has recently been witnessed on the Victoria campus.

A Few weeks ago, at a meeting of the International Club, some student MRA members gained admission to a Club meeting through a trick. They then proceeded to expound their doctrine, notwithstanding requests to stop, made to them by International Club members.

The student MRA members gained admission to the Club's meeting by offering themselves as folk-singers.

They came to the meeting on the night, introduced themselves as folk-singers, and took control of the stage. Only then did they reveal their true intentions, by reintroducing themselves as MRA members. They then expounded the MRA doctrine at considerable length.

Requests from various committee members to stop were ignored by the MRA group, which sang its way through several loaded doctrinal songs before finally leaving the stage.

Many members of the Club were incensed by this behaviour. The Club has members from many nations, and to eliminate as far as possible the chance of conflict arising, politics are studiously avoided in all the Club's activities. Offers of assistance, financial and otherwise, from political organisations, are always refused.

By this means the Club provides an environment in which students, from New Zealand and overseas, can meet without the risk of their different political views resulting in conflict.

The student MRA members clearly set no store by this ideal at all. Politics were the theme of all the songs belted out by the MRA invaders.

If the International Club can be criticised in any way, it is that it was too genteel with the MRA. MRA had misrepresented their intentions, and gained admission to the Club by trickery. They had taken advantage of those gathered together and had forcefully expounded their political philosophy.

Unfortunately, the fundamental decency of the International Club members got the better of them All that they did was to protest to the invading MRA. They did not give MRA the treatment that they deserved. The Club members should have advanced as a united body on the self-professed singers and thrown them clean out of the window.

MRA, like any other group or individual, has the right to be heard. But misrepresentation and infiltration is no way to exercise this right.—G.E.J.L.