CONSCRIPTION AND ITS POSSIBILITIES.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2708, 1 March 1916, Page 7

CONSCRIPTION AND ITS POSSIBILITIES.

Sir, —As everybody seems to feol that oonseription must come, and that shortly, an interesting question to my mind arises, and it is this: In the event i)f conscription being enforced in New Zealand before it is an the Old Country, will the British Government be violating Constitutional Law if it accepts conscriptionist soldiers from the Dominions to fight alongside or to help volunteer soldiers from the Old Country or from other Dominions where the compulsory system is not in vogue? It so, this ■would mean, I take it, that we in New Zealand would have to wait for a lead from the Old Country. Would a New Zealand enactment bringing in oonscription need the assent of His Majesty, m view of the fact that we would be passing an enactment requiring our men to go abroad and he subject as soldiers to His Majesty's commands ? I should bo glad to see these questions answered in your columns if the encyclopaedic knowledge required of the editor of an important journal like ■Tun Dominion is wide enough to cover an answer to the above questions.—l am, etc., "URBS IN RURE." Pahiatua, February. 28. [There is nothing to prevent conscriptionists and volunteers fighting side by side. In Britain a form of conscription has already been adopted by Parliament. The Military Service Act which recently passed into law, and'which comes into operation this month, contains the following clause:— Every male British subject who on the fifteenth day of August, iOiS, (a) was ordinarily resident in Great Britain, and (b) had attained the age of 18 years, and had not attained ■ tho ago of 41 years, and (c) was unmarried or was a widower without children dependent on him shall, unless within the'exemptions set out in tho First Schedule to this Act be deemed as from the appointed date to have been duly enlisted in His Majesty's regular forces for general service with tho colours or in reservo for the period of the war, and to have been forthwith transferred to tho reserve. When the Bill was before Parliameni protest was made against the exclusion of Ireland from this compulsory servicc clause, but Ireland was not included. Thus Great Britain has preceded New Zealand in introducing a form of conscription, and has provided for volunteers and conscriptionists fighting ii; the British Army. So far as New Zca-

land is concerned, any Act passed by our own Parliament would require to ■receive His Majesty's assent before becoming law, but that rule applies to all Acts of Parliament.]