SHIRKING THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3161, 13 August 1917, Page 6

SHIRKING THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

Sir-Surely the National, government, in te anxiety to avoiil facing the problem of making adequate financial provifor menrf the Second Division is not seriously considering the question of conscripting Youths of nineteen? Past expSce has proved that the average immature lad is not capable of standing up to the strain of modern warfare, and he should not be pressed into, service while thousands of young marned men remain—men who are right willing to go to tile front, if the Government will oiilj fin flipiv duty and give the married men the chanco by making adequate provision fw tho wives and families that must be left behind. The proposal to call up the youths may be an underhand means of forcing married men into the fume line or may be that it is only a "feeler" to see how the public would tike such a proposal. However, the paraSh which appeared in The Dominion Uye, a ono without a contradiction from tho Government, and that being so they must bo taken as being substantially correct. If the public does not make an emphatic protest against this effort of the Government to evade the responsibility it knows it must face when it X on the Second Division, the next step will doubt be the calling of boys of eighteen, and then boys of seventeen, and the Government which has p edged "the last man and the last shilling wil perhaps try and justify tins downward step by stating that other countries have for months hart boys of seventeen m tho tiring line. I am, etc.,