MAORI RECRUITS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20063, 9 October 1939, Page 6

MAORI RECRUITS

ENROLMENT SCHEME OFFICERS APPOINTED FORMS AT POST OFFICES EAST COAST INTEREST Recruiting for the special Maori Battalion which the Army Department is forming for service in New Zealand or overseas, on a basis of equality with the European force also being raised in New Zealand, was to start to-day throughout the Dominion. It is expected that there will be a substantial surplus of volunteers for this force in Gisborne and on the East Coast, after the filling of the quota, and that no difficulty will be found in maintaining reinforcements for the Maori corps. Postmasters throughout the district have been instructed to accept enrolments for the Maori Battalion, and special forms are to be supplied for this purpose. Pending the receipt of these forms, those used for enlistment ol men for the Special New Zealand Military Force are to be used, with a superscription indicating the connection with the native corps. Recruiting; Officers

The Government doubtless will appoint recruiting officers in various parts of the district, who will circulate among the tribesmen and give information to Ihos.e interested in the Maori Battalion. This has been done elsewhere, and in Wairoa Messrs. A., T. Carroll and Dick McGregor have been appointed recruiting officer and assistant recruiting officer respectively, while several schoolmasters, postmasters, and officers in charge of Public Works Department's camps have been designated as deputyassistant recruiting officers. It has been noted that none of the men chosen from this district for the special military force now in camp has been a Maori, and it is expected that -while enlistment in either the general forces or in the Maori corps is to be a matter of option for the individual, the recruiting officers and their assistants will seek to secure n:ost, if not all of those Maoris whose rames already have been listed as volunteers. It is felt that if all these keen young men were lost to the native force, it would handicap the efforts of leading Maoris to build up a battalion equal in Character and spirit to tjrat which represented the native race of New Zealand in the Great War.