CIVILIAN CORPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 119, 22 May 1942, Page 5

CIVILIAN CORPS

AUSTRALIAN SCHEME

Older Age Groups For Vital

Construction Jobs

T Jnited Press Association.—Copyright.

Special Australian Correspondent.

SYDNEY, May 21

Thirty thousand men will be mobilised within the next few months in Australia's new war works army, called the Civilian Construction Corps. Thousands of workers are already serving with the corps in all parts of Australia. Most of the new draft will be called up compulsorily from the 45 to 55 age group, but it is announced that suitable volunteers between 18 and 60 will also be accepted.

Under the direction of the Allied Works Council, the corps will build aerodromes, roads, railways, docks, dams, stores and munitions factories. No combined Federal and State public works programmes have ever attempted the same' vast amount of construction as is controlled by the council, with Mr. E. G. Theodore as director-general.

The council allots vital construction jobs in order of priority to works authorities and private contractors whose plants and organisations have been co-opted in the scheme. Labour from the Civilian Construction Corps, as well as plant and materials, will be provided by the council. A Commonwealth census of constructional plant has been made and plant is being called up as required. Members of the corps will be paid award rates, payment being made for wet weather and similar interruptions. The men will receive one week's leave, plus travelling time to their homes, in each year of service. They will also be entitled to nine public holidays each year. Work on those days will be paid for at penalty rates.

Mr. Theodore has power both to enrol volunteers and direct men compulsorily to serve in the corps. Compulsory enrolment, however, will be made from age groups without interfering with army requirements. Volunteers who appear to be draft dodgers will be released to the army. Publicans, salesmen, accountants, jewellers and grocers are among those already serving. Members of the corps working near their homes will be permitted to live at home. Those on jobs away from home will live in camps. Sleeping accommodation and messing facilities will be provided. Where the corps has taken over the entire staffs and plants of big contracting firms or where public works authorities have been absorbed, the men employed are seconded back to their employers while remaining members of the corps. All members will be under civil discipline, but may not leave the corps for the duration of the war.

NEW FRONT HOPES

Speculation Follows Latest Arrivals In Ulster

OPINION IN AMERICA

WASHINGTON, May 20. The second day's reaction to the news of the arrival in Ulster of powerful United States forces represents a further crystallisation of tne hope that the opening of a second front in Europe is imminent.

t A New \ork Post headline saying Allies Plan Invasion With 300.000 Men ' is an example, and comes on top of an Associated Press of America story from London, quoting a responsible military observer, to the effect that the balance of militarypower in western Europe has at last shifted in the Allies' favour. The Christian Science Monitor Washington correspondent also says: "On the basis of comprehensive inside information, the War Department is to-day convinced the balance of power has definitely shifted from the Axis to the United Nations." The Monitor correspondent adds that further to improve pooling of Allied war resources the United Nations' representatives in Washington are planning to establish an international war production board in supreme command of the economic front.

A dissident voice is that of the New York Times military writer, Mr. Hanson Baldwin, who says: "Since December 7, the strategic situation has steadily deteriorated. . . . the recent wave of optimism induced by our victory in the Coral Sea, reports about poor German morale, and the start of a local Russian offensive in the Kharkov sector have distorted the world perspective."

He says that the Reichswehr has 260 to 300 divisions, of which 180, with 25 or more divisions from German satellites, are on the eastern fronts, leaving at least 100 German, 15 or more satellite and numerous Italian divisions elsewhere.

Mr. Baldwin concludes that* British and American forces are numerically probably not yet equal to those of the Axis in Germany and western Europe, although they soon may be. "For the moment everything depends on Russia," he adds.