NATIONAL IDEALS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 897, 17 August 1910, Page 5

NATIONAL IDEALS.

NEED TOR COMPULSORY SERVICE'. The -relation of compulsory service to citizenship was tho subject of an address given before tho New Zealand Club s yesterday by the Hon. L. Curtis, an .ex-member of the Legislative - Assembly of Cape Colony. Mr. Curtis stated that in South Africa they had not yet got compulsory service, though ho thought that they would have it. New Zealand, in establishing the system, had set an example to the rest of the Empire. He had been studying the outlook of New Zealandcrs as a community. He' had lived in South Africa 'for ten years, and there the desire was to create a nationality with an-individuality'of its own. He had been' in Canada, and found there the same outlook equally pronounced. All he had heard of/Australia made him!believe that the object was the same there. He thought that there was the same outlook in New Zealand. What other outlook was there for this'country? New Zealanders had made up their mind not to become part of Australia, and he did not believe they could grow up as part of England. They were too far away. He believed that there was no other out!cok possible than that of a New Zealand nationality. Size was not the important tiling in nationality. ' What constituted the relation of the citizens to a real na-. . tion was not ' privilege- but obligation. To some of them in South • Africa that was not an academic question. He had seen men who had accepted burgers' rights, thinking only of the'rights and not of- the duties, who had .found themselves in a. most painful position when war broke out. ,

. The essence of citizenship was obligation, that one was liable to devote money and life itself if necessary to tho State to which one belonged. They must lie free or die for the safety of the country of which they were members. If the British fleet were swept away, New Zealand and South Africa would both be exposed to invasion, and possibly to conquest. In that case what would nationality mean to the citizens who had really realised its essence? It would mean iv .foreign enemy might conquer South Africa and New Zealand, but it could never conquer tho true South Africans or the'true, ers. It might take their country, but it would find that that country was nothing but the tomb of the South Africans or of the New Zealnnders, and that any man who remained and preferred to serve his conquerors did not deserve to be called a citizen of New Zealand or South Africa in the true sense of the word. That, he thougnt, was what natiouality must iinplj And tho unlj way in which this difficult ideal could be "realised by a democracy ■ was by a tedious routine of daily discipline and drill, willingly; endured by the men who held political power in the country.