WASTE OF MONEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 228, 26 September 1929, Page 28

WASTE OF MONEY.

OUR TERRITORIAL SYSTEM.

BOREDOM OF PARADES.

RESERVE OFFICER'S INDICTMENT,

(By QUENTIN POPE.)

The effect of the present hubbub over military training is to obscure the fact that our boys are getting none. lam not aware whoso mind conceived the notion that a soldier can be created by a system of night parades and half-a-dozen Saturday afternoons each year, though if he was not a military man he very evidently did not think it worth while ever to inspect his handiwork. But the

fact remains that the present system is the most colossal waste of money that any New Zealand Government has yet devised. The notion that two hours a week, with "training" carried out in semi-darkness, will turn an indifferent young man into a soldier is akin to the notion, once solemnly advanced by the Otago members of the University Senate, that a fortnight at the end of the medical course would be sufficient to turn the budding doctor into a psychologist. The conviction that our youngsters derive any benefit from these parades is held most firmly by those who have never examined the system or gone through it. Ihe present chain of parades through which the young territorial passes on his way to the annual camp represent nothing save an infinite boredom, a boredom sanctioned by law,, and therefore regretfully to be endured. And the moment that there is a chance of release—lo, the scramble that ensues! The annual camps, because of the shocking waste to which the country is committed through fifty weeks of the year, last just long enough to lick the men into shape for real training which they never receive. Hence our men arc not even halfbaked; they are really only patient sufferers at the hands of their elders, most of whom have not endured the system. If ever we get a Government composed of men who have seen our territorial training in full flower I know what the result will be.

An Artillery Experience. It is now eleven years since, at the call of duty, I joined a battery of artillery, a battery which considered itself a crack corps, and in which I was destined to spend five years training the martial young. Part of this time was the war period, and, because the artillery was considered the best part of the expeditionary force, and because the authorities gave preference to recruits who had had previous training in the territorials, wo had the pick of each year's postings to choose from. In addition, out of our total strength of about 120 we had never less than some 20 young men who were eager for promotion, and who were willing to spend a good deal of their time with a special n.c.o.'s class. These boys trained on the regular parade night along with the battery; they attended at the drill-hall on another night each week for special gun-drill; they paraded on Saturday afternoons to learn a hundred and one things which could not be taught save in the open air; and they went out with horses all day on Sundays. With this stiffening of reasonably trained men, the corps flourished and took upon itself a pardonable swagger. Then the war ended, there was a rush for the Reserve, and the dog days began. For three years I wrestled with the indifferenece of the men who succeeded them, an indifference striking as it was disheartening. My primary job each year was to lick into something approaching shape a group of about 50 postings (the battery was now a six-gun affair), and to infuse in them something of the necessary conceit at fact that they belonged to the senior service. I found an apathy that was deadening, and a stupidity that was extraordinary. At the end of three years I faced the facts, and, in spite of the overtures of my major, went to the leisure of the Reserve—a Reserve in which I have been supposed to do a certain number of parades, but where and when no one has thought to tell me.

Night Parades and Efficiency. The notion that any given number of senior cadets can be turned into artillerymen by a system of night parades is laughable. Watch these cadets performing their own familiar foot drill and see how often they get into hopeless messes. Then realise that the only training which will be of practical use to them if they go into the artillery is their rifle drill. Their foot drill, of course, is useless, for as a mounted corps they will do dismounted cavalry drill, which is based

on what it is possible for a horse to perform, and which consequently knows no such thing as forming fours. Remember that in addition to this they will be asked to learn standing gun-drill, something about the gun and how to handle it (fire discipline), something about ballistics, rifle exercises and musketry (they must fire their musketry course each year), signalling, riding, harnessing, horses, physical exercises, grooming and mounted drill. This last they will get only in camp—if the Department allows them sufficient horses, which usually it does not. Remember that there are ten men in a gun-crew, and that in all that appertains to the gun each man's task is different, No. 1 being the man in charge of the gun, No. 3 the No. 4 the powder monkey, and so on. They ride on different limbers, they have ; different responsibilities, yet each must know the work of every other man and be able to do it, and in advanced training the writers of the King's Regulations have worked out how the gun is to be handled when casualties reduce the crew. Now ask yourself; if a system of night parades, at which most of the time is wasted in preparation for the training and clearing up after it, can ever be really effective. Or if six Saturday afternoons' training will do more than irritate the boy who has to be in uniform on a hot day. I have taken artillery training because I know something about its effccts —more, perhaps, than the officers of the Royal New Zealand Artillery, who are not of philosophical mind. But in infantry training I have eeen the same waste of time, and a deadly dullness besides. Tt is not possible to do much with a squad in. a crowded drillhall, and even that little, it seems to me, is not done.

Back to a Voluntary System. The remedy is at hand. Anyone who recalls the smartness and keennuss of the volunteer units, practically any one of which could have licked our best Territorial corps at any branch of the game, would welcome a return to that system. v But if value for money is desired, and some measure of protection, the best that could be done would be the creation of a skeleton corps of men, volunteers all of them, who should be trained intensively under the protection of the existing legislation. This point I have discussed with many officers of our overseas forces,- and they are in general agreement that the plan is a good The reasoning is simple. It,

must be admitted that our Territorials would be practically no defence against any force which was launched against them. The object of any Government, then, must b6 to provide the nucleus of an expeditionary force, and this could be done by training properly sufficient men to furnish the officers and n6n-commis-sioned 6fficers of a division. If necessary, the men might be put into camp for the whole period, or in two periods in successive years. The money expended need be no greater- than it is now, and the return would be the framework of a force which would at least have some highly intensive training at the hands of a capable staff before it went into action.