THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, October 3, 1940. THE SPUR OF NECESSITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24419, 3 October 1940, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, October 3, 1940. THE SPUR OF NECESSITY

The Labour Government did not willingly set the machinery of commilitary service in motion. It had first to be convinced of the necessity for taking that important step by the failure of the voluntary system to provide men in sufficient numbers to enable the establishment of an adequate emergency defence force within the country. The decision to use compulsion meant, indeed, the abandonment by the Government of one of its most cherished principles. It persevered with the voluntary method of enlistment until the ineffectiveness of it was clearly demonstrated and until the horizons of peace throughout the world were wholly obscured by the murk of war in Europe. When, however, it finally resolved on the employment of arbitrary measures for the strengthening of the Dominion’s defences it did so with the approval of an overwhelming body of public opinion, and to its credit it has to be said that it embarked on the new programme with an energy sufficient to conceal any lack of enthusiasm for compulsion that might have existed within its own ranks. To-day, within a week of the commencement of the first ballot, the names of men required to offer themselves for territorial training are announced. In this district, as elsewhere, the list is impressively large, but it has to be remembered that the capacity of reservists to pass an exacting medical test has to be taken into consideration, and it is for. this reason that 16,000 names have been drawn to provide an immediate increase of some 6000 men for the territorial forces. The ballot, of course, by no means exhausts the strength of the first division of the General Reserve, in which approximately 93,000 men are registered, but other ballots will follow as the training of those at present in camp or, under service orders is completed and accommodation and training facilities become available. .

The value of this compulsory training system should swiftly prove itself. In a period of three months the average recruit should be capable of transformation into a fairly efficient soldier —a result which could not be hoped for under the wasteful system of occasional parades and short annual camps. At the very least a useful domestic defence force can now be said to be in the process of formation, while the reservists destined for training in the various territorial groups throughout the country will, as the result of their preliminary experience of the military routine, respond the more efficiently to advanced training methods if and when they are obliged to answer the call for active service. For it should be noted that inclusion in this or later ballots for territorial service does not exempt any man from the obligation to serve under active service conditions if he is subsequently drafted as an expeditionary force unit. A certain amount of dislocation, of both private and business arrangements, must result from the transfer of large numbers of men from civil into military life. In cases of genuine hardship or difficulty there is provision for appeal. It may be hoped, however, that the right of appeal will be exercised with discrimination and with the clearest recognition of the extraordinary need for preparedness which confronts this Dominion in common with every other part of the Empire. The British Commonwealth is fighting not merely its own battle against the spreading evil of totalitarianism, . but the battle of all traditionally free peoples, including those who are at the moment suffering the harshest restraints of the Nazi tyranny. New Zealand has its growing part to play in the struggle for liberty. It has a plain, and . inescapable duty to make the best and most practicable dispositions possible against the menace of an uncertain future. The men upon whom the obligation to give service has already fallen, or may fall in the coming months, will, we believe, accept their temporary change in status not only uncomplainingly but with a deep-rooted determination to equip themselves for every possible emergency. In a like spirit those whose part it is to remain in their normal occupations will render the best account of themselves by willingly adjusting their lives to altered circumstances. Mutual respect, as between soldier and civilian, will burgeon like the trees in this pleasant season of the year on the basis of such common acceptance of responsibility.