The Outsider and the Other fellow.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 77, 30 August 1912, Page 4

The Outsider and the Other fellow.

"The outsider often sees most of the game," remarked Chaplain-Aiajor Gray at Ravensbourne, says the "Otago Daily Times." "After twelve years' service as a non-combatant in the New Zealand volunteers, he favored universal military training. Under that system the rich man's son and the poor man's son were equally trained to share in the defence of their country. He defended military training camps most warmly and said his experience had satisfied him that the most exacting parents need have no misgivings concerning tho influence of camp life on their sons. So far as his observation served him," he said, "no finer mora] and physical training could bo obtained anywhere than in the ranks of the territorial forces, which he hoped would long continue to serve as a defence to this portion of tho Empire."

Like tho rest of his ilk, the author o* the above is carefully "exempted by Act of Parliament from service in the firing line. So that when he quotes: "Tlie outsider often sees most of the game," ho does not realise what a trap ho has set for himself.

It is most remarkable how these "exempted patriots" extol those things which, like- hell, are generally for the "other fellow." If he "favors universal military training," why is the clergyman exempted?

The fallacy that "under the system the poor man's son and the rich man's son were equally trained" has already been exposed in The Worker.

There can bo no such thing as equal training, with unequal wealth.

Whilst the poor man's son has always been found to be a capital bul-let-stopper or bayonet cushion, the rich man's son invariably gets the commission, all the kudos, and most of the pension.

The latter part of the paragraph only proves the truth of the opening line, by turning the whole of the argument against its author. "He" served as a volunteer: the "other fellow" must be compelled!