PROPER CLASSIFICATION WANTED

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2788, 5 June 1916, Page 8

PROPER CLASSIFICATION WANTED

Sir,—l have just soon an/outline of the Compulsory Service Bill, and I..think it is deficient in one respect: it ihukes ao provision i'or classing the conscripts according to age, as in the English Bill anil in all Continental couutries. If this Bill is passed as it is, many youths of twenty will be drawn, for service and many men of mature ago will lc— tie very men who have shirked voluntary service and have rendered the Bill necessary. You cannot say that youths of twenty have been shirkers. They Uavo only become eligible. It's the shirkers Mr. Massey says he wants to rope in, and the bachelors of mature age are doubly shirkers. ' They have shirked their duty. to the State' in avoiding matrimony and military service as well, and for that reason alone I consider tliey should be first to go. Besides, if they never came back they would not be a very great loss, at least not so great h loss as that of young men who Would be likely to assist in replenishing the earth, when they came back. AVe should 6end our best, and boys of twenty are not our best, especially those out of offices and shops, who have never done any hard work; and I hold that it is impossible to make a first-class, enduring, soldier in. six months out of a youth of twenty. lam an old soldier, and have seen service, and I think I can speak with a little authority on that. point. The largo number of young men who have coino back unwounded, but broken in health, should help to bear me out ill this opinion.—l am, etc., VETERAN. Wairoa, Hawke's Bay, May 30, 1916.