LABOUR MEETING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 248, 14 July 1919, Page 8

LABOUR MEETING

« At tho usual Sunday night Labour meeting at the Alexandra Hall last evening Mr. If. Holland, M.P., spoke on "Boy Conscription and its Menace." The title had reference to tho proposals mado by Sir James' Allen for taking youths into camp for a period of months at tho beginning of their career in the New Zealand Territorial Army of the future. The menace of which Mr. Holland spoke was tho menace of tho voilcd plague. Ho sought to show that tho disease was a necessary concomitant of all war, (intl of all aggregation of men under military organisation. He referred to' the prevalence of diseases of this character in the armies of foreign nations) in wars in which Britain was not engaged, but ho devoted more attention to the British Army, making special mention of India and of this Inst war. He spoke in most detail about New Zealand, and the New Zealand soldiers. He would not have it' that war organisation hnd merely discovered the disease without actually producing it. Ho declared that the ratral atmosphere of a military camp must bo low, seeing that the main purpose of all the training was to bring a peaceful man to tho frame of mind that he was eager to kill his fellow man, and that the effect of such training was to produce a psychology in tho soldier, and especially in tiie young soldier, predisposing him to yield to temptations against which in civil life he would have been proof. Ho was careful to say that he did not blame tho man for the lapse, but the system of militarism. Tho menace, _he uirged, would exist so long as militarism existed, and militarism would exist until they could get rid of capitalism.