New Zealand must be forgiving place. 15 years after World War I, it elected into office a Prime Minister and three Cabinet ministers who were convicted of sedition during the First World War. They were the leaders of the first Labour Party government in New Zealand.
Peter Fraser was sentenced to 12 months in prison for a seditious speech. Walter Nash was fined £5 for importing seditious literature. Both became prime ministers in time.
These four men, all members of the newly founded Labour Party and lifelong Christian Socialists, opposed the introduction of conscription in World War I. A major factor in the formation of the Labour Party New Zealand in 1916 was the imposition of conscription in 1915.
Ironically, these same men, Prime Minister Peter Fraser and Cabinet minister and later Prime Minister Walter Nash, along with two other Cabinet members who were convicted of sedition for opposing conscription in World War I introduced conscription into New Zealand in 1940 to fight the Second World War. Difficulties in filling the Second and Third Echelons for overseas service in 1939 and 1940, the Allied disasters of May 1940 and public demand led to its introduction.
The total eventually conscripted was more than 312,000. About 800 were labelled ‘military defaulters’ and interned for the duration of the war in specially built camps in remote areas.
The police cracked down severely on anti-conscription groups. As Russia haven’t yet been invaded by the Nazis, leading opponents of conscription included those traitors in the Communist Party.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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