AUSTRALIAN

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16142, 21 February 1918, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN

REINFORCEMENTS

THE RECRUITING PROBLEM

(from OUR OWN correspondent.)

SYDNEY, February 13. Although the number of men being sent from Australia is not sufficient to maintain the Australian activo service divisions at full strength, transports full of reinforcements still leave these shores regularly. But tho number thus departing gets fewer and lower, and the recruiting problem, becumes more and more ditticult of solution.

The Commonwealth is covered by a great, expensive recruiting organisation, in which returned soldiers are largely employed. Recently a conference of all tnese officers was held in iSydncy, and they were asked to state some ox tho influences —apart from coward ico and selfishness—which acted against recruiting. Here are some of tho answers on which there was practical unanimity: — There was :k> much muddling by the inoompeteut Dofenco Department in connexion with tho payment of allowances to soldiers' dependants that other men with dependants were afraid to enlist.

The action of tho Australian censors in withholding news that was common property elsewhere in tho Empire gave the whole population a feeling of distrust towards tho authorities and prevented them getting a proper understanding of the gravity of the war situation.

Tho lenient treatment accorded enemy aliens made many men'say that they were not going abroad to fight for a refugo for Germans.

The people were disgusted with tho sight o? so many fit and eligible men in khaki being kopt on home service, in Australia.

Many incorrigible rogues and criminals who had enlisted and then been sent back and peremptorily discharged were going around, posing as returned heroes and giving the military service the worst possible reputation. The pensions granted incapacitated soldiers were not calculated in proportion to their pre-war earnings. Many local bodies, which had been taken control of by the extreme section of Labour, were hostile to anything in khaki, and worked against recruiting.

A conference on similar lines was also held in Victoria, and it decided to recommend tho appointment of new kinds of State and local recruiting committees, which would send out to all eligible men, and subsequently "follow up," cards carrying the following questions:—(a) Are you willing to enrol for military training with a view to service with the A.I.F. ? (b) If so, state the earliest date on which you can enrol. Thoso who know anything of conditions in Australia can work up 110 enthusiasm over the chances of success of such a scheme as this.