NOT PLAYING THE GAME

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 18 February 1915, Page 3

NOT PLAYING THE GAME

A SPARE MAN DON'T SPAKE HIS WORDS DR. HORACE ECCLES OF KAWAKAWA Dr. Eccles, of Kawakawa, though a spare man, does not spare the man who is~ loafing behind the post; the man who should be at the front. Our old friend has been all through the Boer war and knows what the smell of powder is; and if his own good lady would only say " Get, Horace," he would be off again to-morrow. He is full of grit, Imperialism and energy, a thorough going kind medical man, and a soldier, as the following clipped from ouv old newspaper*of the Bay of Islands, the Northern Luminary, will ] show. (Dr Buck, the unsuccessful candidate, is off to the war, let it be understood).

In proposing the toast of the " Army and Navy," at Dr Buck's Kawakawa banquet, Mr W. Smith, of the K.T.C. Mills, Waipuna, put forth the proposal that every single man of military age should be drafted to central camps and trained. The married men who are out of work could then be placed in the vacant positions and formed into a re~ serve. "We are in a- life and death struggle," said Mr Smith, "^and it is every person's duty to go to the front who can. When the British Empire could put three or four million men in the field "the end would be in sight. But if we are all going to sit down at home like mollycoddles, God help the nation."

In responding to the toast, Lieut.-Col. Eccles, M.D., referred to Mr Smith's proposal. He believed the war was almost a question of stalemate simply because the British nation had not sufficient men to put in the field to end it quickly. " But we must not spend our time in criticising the Motherland. New Zealand has its own obligations. Is it living right up to them ? Every man capable of bearing arms and physically fit, and having no dependents, should be undergoing training to go to the front. The place for able-bodied young men is not in this country; they are wanted in the battleline. But a number'Of our young men will not enlist. It is an absolutely damned rotten thing to me that married men should volunteer and these damn young hounds will not. We have a number of young men about here —living in their hats —whose proper place is the training camp or firing line. The older men and men with dependents should be formed into defence forces, and trained in their odd hours, forming a national reserve, to fight in their own country."