MILITARY SERVICE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17288, 2 October 1916, Page 3

MILITARY SERVICE.

NEW ZEALAND RESERVE. TOTAL OF 200,000 MEN. 80,000 IN THE FIRST DIVISION. Since the closing of the period for enrolment in the Expeditionary Reserve the Government Statistician (Mr Malcolm Eraser) and his staff have been busily engaged in dealing with applications for enrolment certificates, notifications of change of address, fresh enrolments, sending out acknowledgment cards, and completing and purging tho registers. Tho amount of work thus involved is necessarily huge, and to cope with it Mr Draper uaa uud nis staff increased to over ninety, lhe

work, However, Uad suiflcienuy progressed by i'l'iday ior Mr to ue d.oie to givo au -'evening ■ t '? st reporter au approximate idea of tho results of tne recent) enrolment. ■ Altogether, during tho enrolment period proclaimed and directed under the Military {service Act, about VIM) fresh enrolments were received. Ihesej however, include a fair numDer of men who having previously registered under the iNatiomii Registration Act did not require to enroi again, and it is ex-

pected that when the rolls have been completely checked tnere will be a fairly substantial reduction in the list of new names. , New Zealanders all along have had the reputation for being a migratory population, but the results disclosed under the Military Service Act, requiring all men who had changed their address since the tailing of lhe National Register to notify the fact, to to show tuat this report is even better founded than is generally supposed. Altogether, under tho Military bervice Act, between 40,000 and 50,000 men have notified changes of address. Considering that only ten months had elapsed since the taking of the National Register the total is remarkable; it is more than was expected, and has consequently thrown more work on the shoulders of the Go-

vernment Statistician's Department. "Of course," said Mr Fraser,, a good many of these men have notified changes which were not changes; they have played for safety, and have thus erred on the right side. These notifications are all being acknowledged, and the trouble now is to locate the men in the particular districts to which they belong." ,/ ~„ rKn In all, up to Friday morning, 182,650 men had applied for enrolment certificates. They are all entitled to ac-

knowledgment cards, and practically the whole* of these have now been sent out. In fact, all back work under this head has now been overtaken, and cards are being sent out daily as fresh applications are received. This will be kept up. As for the enrolment certificates themselves,. Mr Fraser expects that he will commence sending these out some time during October, and will probably complete the undertaking in a month or six weeks from that date. These will be dealt with in alphabetical order, taking the " A's" first, then the " B's,' and so on. "My first duty," he said, "is to complete the register, and be in a position to take a ballot. I am concentrating on that work now, and in the meantime the other work is being proceeded with as required." Asked how many Reservists he estimated would be on tho completed roll, Mr Fraser said about 200,000. Of these there would be about 70,000 or 80.000 in the First Division, or there might be more, and the balance would be in the Second Division. These total numbers, however, did not by any means represent the number of men who would be able to serve, as they included the maimed, the blind, tho deaf and the dumb, and other unfits. "The position," he observed, "is that every man of military ago can only be in one of two places—either in the Reserve, whether he is fit or unfit, or in the Expeditionary Force."

He intimated that altogether about 20,000 men had not applied for enrolment certi6cates, but these included a considerable number of men who had already gone into camp. The others, evidently, were not in a hurry to get them, but they were worth having for a man's own protection, and would be supplied on application. "I am now getting tho rolls purged," concluded the Government Statistician, "and I am convinced that they will be pretty complete. There will not be many men who are off them, and when we are ready we will tako to trace them. We have ample powers for that. The First Division has already been sorted out, the rule adopted, when it has been a question as to whether a man Bhould be placed in the First or Second Division, being to place him in the First Division. This is in accordance with the spirit of tho Act.