New Zealand

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 10, 10 August 1916, Page 5

New Zealand

“PLEASE EXPLAIN !” A SLAP AT THE SLACKERS. NEW RECRUITING MOVE. (Ron. W. F. Massey (chairman of the Recruiting Board) telegraphs from the ofhcial residence (Molesworth Street, Wellington) to-day as follows:

From time to time since the initia*tion of the now recruiting scheme, the attention of tho Recruiting Board has? been directed to families in different districts of the Dominion with two or more single sons of military ago, not one of whom has joined tile Expeditionary Force under the voluntary principle of enlistment. Of course it was impossible for the Board to take any action in these cases, as the decision is left entirely to the individual himself, but in response to numerous requests that some other steps should be taken to bring home to such men a due sense of their obligation to the State and to their comrades and fel-low-citizens who are already at the front, a section has been entered in tho Military Service Act which empowers the Minister of Defence—if he is satisfied with respect to any family that it consists of two or more brothers or half-brothers who belong 16 the first division of the reserve and are not permanently unfit—to bring all or any of those brothers before h Military Service Board and there show cause why they should not be called up for service in the Expedi-tionai-y Force. The Act having now passetj and become statute law, it is intended to bring this section inro operation as early as possible, and if any cases ns defined by it are Mill to be found when the military service boards are set up they will provide the first business for these boards to adjudicate upon.