SECOND DIVISION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3122, 28 June 1917, Page 5

SECOND DIVISION

VOLUNTEERING MAY BE STOPPED EXHAUSTING THE SINGLE MEN UNFITS TO BE RE-EXAMINED. ■"'•'■■ I - An important statement regarding the recruiting of the remainder of thl Expeditionary Force Reserve was made to a Dominion reporter by tho Defenco Minis-' •■wr (t>ir James Allen) yesterday. :. It has already been announced that we have stopped voluntary recruiting for •tho .First Division," said tho Minister. "I think that in all probability'wo shall .stop voluntary recruiting for the Second Division also. There does not.seem to be any good reason for keeping it going, especially, as tho classes in the Second Division will bo so 6mall that every man •will know: about the time that ho is likely to be'required to go into camp. I think it is better that we should settle by, ballot the-time for every man to go. To permit voluntary enlistment would make it necessary for us to continue to ■ use' district rolls, but wo shall find it more convenient to use only one roll for every class. It will bo a great convenience for us to work with single rolls instead of numbers of district rolls, because tho preparation -of these* district! rolls will be a~ colossal task, so big that • tho w ; ork could not be done in time. "Regarding the classes of the Second Division, all that wo have to go on now is the National Register, and the condition of many reservists as to the number of their children will have altered sinco then. M : e propose-to bring our information up to date by, issuing-to post offices all over the country cards which Second Division men will be asked.-to procuxo and fill in. I don't think tho cards aro out yet, but.they will'be out in a day or two, arid they will be returnable by some date to be named. The Government Statistician w-ill bo ready to commence to make up his Tolls by the end of July. It should be understood that wo are not' Bending 1 the cards to tho'.men. Reservists will have to get them;from the post offices. If a man neglects to fill in a card notifying a change in his condition, and .'lie is subsequently drawn in the wrong class,-ho will still havo the right of appeal to the Military Service Board ; "Before we call uipon' the Second Division ' wo propose to re-examine tho men rejected as medically unfit, the C 2 men. ■What wo propose to do is to set up a special medical board to go through tho medical history sheets, of these men, and to pick from among them the names of .those men iwho in their judgment would be again judged medically unfit if they were again examined. Tho. other C 2 men will be pat into another class, and this 'latter class will be medically rc-examin-od: The others will-be'held over meantime, possibly to bß're-examined' later. One of the objects of this (fcreliminai-y . classification is to lessen our work. There may be a laTge number of these medically unfit men, perhaps 50,000 of them, and we shall be able to tackle the work of re-examination better if we divide the men into these Awo classes first. i

"Yon '.ask me whether it is intended to give any longer notice to Second Division men than has been allowed, to First Division men before calling them into camp after they are balloted. As far as I know we shall call up reinforcements, two months before the drafts are required to go into camp. We have not always been able hitherto to givo every man his full two months of notice, owing to the necessity for getting men into camp to make up shortages, but in future we hone to be able to give as nearly as possible two months' notice to every man between the time that he is drawn in the ballot and the time that he is called into camp. • . '"The First Division will certainly last two months longer, and may last three months: We may get another draft out of the men reiected previously as unfit and'out of the reconsideration of the men whose nnpeals have been adjourned sine die bv the Military Service Boards. We may even get two drafts from these men. This means that we may have to draw upon tho Second Division m October, and that we are almost certain to be drawing upon it in November.