The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1917. THE MILITARY SERVICE BOARD.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 9 February 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1917. THE MILITARY SERVICE BOARD.

(With which is incorporated The Tailiape Tost and "Waimnrino News).

,<J» The sitting of the Military Service Board in Taihape, just closed, has impressed most clearly upon us the great demand made upon New Zealand for an immediate supply of men. It is now that men are urgently needed and our Defence Department is doing its utmost to meet the wishes of the Heme authorities. A multiplicity of Appeal Boards and Medical boards have been set up to cope with the flow of men the ballots are bringing in, and if Taihape may be taken as an average instance of the nature ,of appeals, the young men of New Zealand are showing a willingness to do their duty to their homes and country which is truly admirable and inspiriting. In only one or two cases was mere any semblance even of a desire to shirk the performance of man's first instinct, to light for his self-preservation. No appellant asked for exemption altogether, but there were one or two, whose cases were least deserving of exemption that desired a respite that amounted to not going to the front at all. The spirit displayed on the whole was of a nature that no one need be ashamed of, and if future sittings of the Board become necessary here, and there is the same absence of the desire to shirk, our men will pass muster with those from any other military district. The constitution of the Board represents all interests. Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., the president, has spent the greater part of his life in law courts, and he is remembered by old pressmen as one of the most obliging of Supreme Court Registrars that they have had to come in contact with. Mr. William Perry, who represents the 'and-owning and farming i nterests, was born on a farm, and has helped to make a veritable river bed of boulders into one of the most successful stud farms in New Zealand. Mr. David McLaren very nearly everybody knows scmciiiing of, in his capacity of a labour leader, who was to some extern shelved when the I.WAV. class of leader became the vogue. Altogether, the Board is one that no suggestion of injustice could be levelled at, and only for a suspicion now and again of the flavour of everyday criminal business in a city lower court,, no sensation of unpleasantness was caused. In Caplain Walker the Defence Department has a ver\ valuable advocate, so important a pos ; ti;n does he fill that it seemed almost v p "ir that the Departmemt ("ici vr: ■ counsel for the other rv' '] 'ii*> extreme fairness of Captain - 's attitude this

would develop-feto a.jight. Ue, however, had nothing to sstf in opposition

when ngnt to exemption was obvioub. Ihe whole proceedings seemed to strongly indicate that the great need ior men was an immediate one, and i:iey equally seemed to foreshadow that the luture need tor men would be niuen less pressing. At least, the Military Service .board is evidence of

cue progress of civilisation amongst jjiuibu people, as well as a lurid instance ox progress socially. The Military Service Board is the present-day representative at the oid-time Press Gang, that went about the country seizing every able-bodied man among Cue poor and middie classes, dragging them from their families, in many in-

stances, not even permitting a goodbye. The rich were not. subjected to this treatment, but to-day that ence has vanished, and even forgotten, or never heard of by the younger generations. Every man is now entitled to be heard in this own interest before he is compelled to perform the duty of an able-bodied man in saving his country from the yoke of an invader. Social progress has been great, but these men who are going to conquer Prussian arrogance and cruelty are also going to the front to enhance soe-

iai progress more rapidly than anytiling that has happened in the past. They are not only making the Empire secure, but they are making new social conditions! from which caste will be entirely expunged and expurgated. When war is over, in place of dismissed fighting men, crippled and maimed, being given, by Act of Parliament, the right to beg for a living, we shall have our pension boards and 'soldier settlement boards, that will represent a further advance socially, as great as that between the Press Gang and the Military Service Board.' With a sane understanding of the work of demobilisation and the absorption of our returning fighting men into civil life and occupation, and a rigid suppression of avarice and exploitation, the prospects of this country's near after-war future are indeed bright. The life of the Military Service Board is not likely to be a lengthy one; its metamorphosis into a settlement board will not long have to be waited for, and whenever that may come this district will have the consciousness that it has done its duty in the provision of men and of money, in hastening that day.