DEFENCE PROPOSALS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1920, Page 4

DEFENCE PROPOSALS

THE NEW SCHEME. (Our Parliamentary Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Nov 11. The Defence Committee has considered a scheme of training and organisation prepared by Defence' Headquarters. Its chief features are as follows:Senior cadets training, fourteen years to eighteen years; recruit training from eighteen to nineteen years; territorials training, nineteen to twenty-two years. Men not required for territorial train, ing will finish at the recruit stage and will then be drafted to the reserve where they remain until the age of thirty. Tho cadet training will take tho form of half day and evening parades. Recruiting will ho carried out in district concentration camps. It will range from two weeks training for well qualified cadets to six weeks physical training for cadets who are reported to he medically unfit for territorial service. During recruit training the best youths will he selected for the territorial force which will hold annual training camps, with certain half day parades and drills where suitable. ' Special training is proposed for officers and non-coms. The scheme of organisation is based on the Expeditionary Force organisation. Tho Committee estimates that the schemo will cost about £500,000 yearly, at once and £600,000 yearly later.