WHO UPHOLD CONSCRIPTION?

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 26, 1 September 1911, Page 16

WHO UPHOLD CONSCRIPTION?

Dear Sir, —Just a few words about compulsory military, training and soldiering generally. Why do they dress a soldier up in a gaudy uniform? To make an ugly thing look nice. Why did recruiting sergeants in England (■and may do so still perhaps) get a man half drunk before enlisting him? So that lie would not know what .he was dpi nig. Who is it that conscription most? The man who wlien he returned from tTie South African war boasted about the number of Boers he had killed, or rather murdered, as some did; the man who when out there did not scruple to shoot down his own comrade if he thought that he had a few pounds on him, as some did; the man who would have- upheld slavery' in the days of slavery (which do not appear to have ended yet); the man who has got or expects to geft a good billet in the defence force; the people who will never have to serve, or who think that they will never have to serve; the boy who does not know what he is in for- What good did the Dreadnought do? Only induced some other nation to follow suit and build another one. What good would New Zealand arming do? Only entice some other nation to do the same and go one better. The more resistance an invauwr expects to meet with t-ho bigger armed force he brings with, him and the greater the slaughter when the two forces meet. And if he expects to meet with no resistance he will bring no armed force art all, but will come in the form of immigrants. The best safeguard for New Zealand, being an island, is the British Navy, for no hostile fleet could start for New Zealand without the naval * authorities knowing of it, and if England lost command of the sea all the land forces of New Zealand would be of no avail. And, lastly, that to resort to threats of fines and imprisonment in order to get an army together is no way to talk to Eniglish-spe-akin.g people. It might do all right for foreigners, but not for Britishers. An army got together in that way would be sure to meet with defeat, . as it always has done —Napoleon, for example.—l am, etc., Well. FACTS.