RETURNED UNFIT SOLDIERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1863, 10 August 1918, Page 3

RETURNED UNFIT SOLDIERS.

Alluding to the number of soldiers returned from England as unlit, before seeing active service, the Defence Commission writes:—“The cost- of training, maintaining, and equipping a man, and of getting him as far as Sling and back, is on the average £ls0 —amounting for 11G7 to £175,050. This is supposing all these-men were single men, and is worked out on the basis of sixteen weeks in camp here, seven weeks' voyage there, seven weeks returning, seven weeks in England —thirtyseven weeks in all —which is certainly less than the average time experienced. Estimating that these men could have been pursuing their ordinary callings, on a low scale of pay (ho average earnings per man would be £l3O, a total of £151,710,. making the loss to the country £326,760. This is putting the posi-* tion in its worst aspect; but it will bo seen that the percentage, whether in men sent from here or of the« amount expended for the Expeditionary Force is so small as to be negligible. In other dominions the per centage of returnings has been much greater. In Canada and Australia about four times as much. But they give the smallest possible time to training their troops before shipment, often only a few days; so that the long training here of four months gives much greater opportunity for culling out the unfits, and the cost of having a small proportion of unfits returned is so very much Jess than the cost of (he longer training for the whole. Probably, also, the fact of the men being in training here for four full months indicates no necessity for urgency in finally examining medically —hence certain slackness. But the cost of the , where it was found that out of a small shipment of 485 men, actually 168 should newer have left New Zealand, caused somewhat of a sensation, and the system was tightened up. In spite of all that can be done, the country must expect to have some ‘returned tourists’ from abroad who have never seen the firing-line; but there is no evidence to show (hat medical examinations have not .been painstaking and satisfactory. We are convinced that the New Zealand Medical Corps is entirely to be depended upon.”