THE DEFENCE SYSTEM.

Evening Star, Issue 22445, 16 September 1936, Page 10

THE DEFENCE SYSTEM.

TO THS EDITOR. Sir, —Like “ Advance,” I think this concerted campaign for compulsory training emanates largely from a body of men who desire to parade in military glory. Being incapable of a sustained ability to debate the subject, they prefer the power to dictate, like the Roman centurion of old, or perhaps for the gratification of some ladyi “ make them do it again, Alee. The “ diggers ” know what I mean. Who is threatening us anyway? 1 rankly. I submit I have no more duty to the State than the State has to me. If I have to defend the State then the State has every right to ensure me economic security. There is not one military officer in this Dominion who protested when returned “ diggers and their families were evicted during the depression as their relief just paid the rent and left nothing over. Generally speaking, we are told to defend “our” country. I own as much of Scotland as I do of Chile. The former country is the property of a few gentlemen —not only their private property but personal, just as personal as their pocket handkerchief. Some of these gentlemen evicted my forbears put them on the beach, and told them to eat seaweed if they liked. Tbeir native Highlands were then and are now nsed as deer forests for a crowd who neither toil nor spin, but wax fat on profit, war or otherwise. Just after the war two Canadian Pacific steamships were sent to Lochboisdale to deport from their native Hebrides the heroes who had returned from the war. Jn the event of war will these advocates of compulsion see that we don’t supply the enemy with cement to build pill boxes, cotton for torpedo war heads to sink our ships, and in one year, as (Admiral Consett says in the Triumph of Unarmed Force,’ supply COO tons of cun ammunition? 1 would like a reply to these questions, not , hints about running shoes from tip-and-run artists who did not wait for shoes of any kind, but must have flown away on the “ magic carpet.”—l am, etc., Popoff?ki. September 16.