The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1918. THE LAST MAN ON THE FARM.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 July 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1918. THE LAST MAN ON THE FARM.

(With which is Incorporated The taihape Post and Walnmmo News).

The acts of some-Military Service Boards are on the border-line of the inscrutable; experience has taught the people of this Dominion that to secure consistent discrimination is hopeless; that deliberations and cisions are frequently characterised by incomprehensible attitudes, and this has been going on almost from the time the Boards were created. The reports of two.cases decided recently lay before us which require a good deal of juggling in any effort to establisn harmony. Tne iuiosyncracies of a Board up Auckland way really bewilders any evenly-balanced intelligence. None of the members~of this Board seem to understand the Government's instructions not to take the last man off a farm. They seem to have the impression that they were appointed to provide argument ana example for red-ragged anti-conscrip-tinonists, for nothing is more effective in prosilytising amongst loyal people than the outrageously inconsistent acts that this particular Military Service Board, at any rate, is guilty of. In Auckland there is a business establishment having a manager who proclaims to New Zealanders that "everything is in a good name~if it is firmly, solidly, honestly established," and he proceeds to invite farmers and other credulous people to send along their open cheques to him and he will forward goods and fill in the amount of the charge himself. Now, this confidence trick did not originate in Auckland, therefore the only smartness displayed by the manager is in the purloining of another man's brains. This ultra-righteous individual, following up this confidence business, says, "a name is worth everything until it is questioned, but when su»piciou clings to it it is worth nothing." We wonder whether it is not fairly generally considered that suspicious circumstances were not disclosed when this manager appealed against fighting for the country of his adop. tion and the homes of people who have such confidence in him as to send him open cheques for goods. We could contemptuously pass over the Military Service Board's questionable decision to let this man escape his duty if it would cease from providing examples of judicial acts that are so atrociously conflicting. The business man the Board absolved from following the of a patriot, is the manager of a business in which there are many sub-managers, ail of whom have been hoastfully "extolled as all that business managers should be. and yet there was none able to manage when the manager was conscripted, and the Board considered his place in the Auckland variety store was of more importance to the country than a place in the trenches with men upon whom no suspicion could rest A". I other case coming before the Military I Service Board was that of a returned I soldier, who did not ask to be freed ' from service, but merely wanted six months' leave on account of family hardship. This man had already given three years and 245 days in fighting the Empire's battles; he returned to New Zealand last March and had been o n leave without pay since sth April; one brother- had left with the Second Reinforcements, another brother had been killed in action; the third brother was in camp, and the fourth was a married man with a family- This man, who only asked the Board for six months' leave, had been compelled by the cailing-up of hia youngest brother, to sell all the cows off his 105-acre farm, as his widowed

mother, aged 76, t and a sister wnu was about to undergo a surgical operation, and who looked after Ms mother, were the only ones left, i-u told the Board he did not desire to sell the farm, nevertheless the Board considered that the married brother, who lived six miles away, could look after the farm, the aged widow-mother ana the afflicted sister till his return, aha they refused to give this man, who had fought al through the war, doing nearly four years' service, the six months' leave he so very modestly requested. Such an act of cruelty should have the attention of the Minister for Defence, and the relief the man asked for should undoubtedly be conceded ,for to all intents and purposes the soldier has "earned it, and he has also earned the thanks of the whole British Empire. While a business manager, surrounded with business managers in the same business house, can be absolved from military duty altogether, this soldier, uffuer circumstances we have detailed, is refused six months' leave. Need we be surprised that anti-conscriptionists and stop-the-war pro-Germans are able to keep up a harassing attitude to the Government, while' they are furnished by Military Service Boards with cases of such outrageous want of uniformity; while they let off the business man. whose place we cannot help thinking could have been filled by an equally capable man in the same store, and force into the firing line a man who has become the last man on the farm through his other brothers having all gone to emulate his splendid record. Anti-conscription-ists are justified in saying, while, such procedure is allowable, that there is one military law for the ricn and another for the poor j We are not concerned about the man who, by the confidence business, invites farmers and others to sencThim their signed open cheques, because we think he would be the sort of man in the trenches that would invite the Germans to trust their Kaiser to his keeping so that no harm might come to him. This man's self-righteousness is thrown into bold relief by the Military Service: Board's refusal to grant the returned soldier, with four, years' active service to his .credit, the relief he asked for. Truly the credit given by one's banker .is of incalculably more virtue than a mere four years' service in the trenches fighting against an unprecedentedly cruel enemy who would enslave the" peoples"of the whole world. It may be mentioned that the Board gave the soldier three months' leave without pay, but wo trust the Minister of Defence will decide that the Board has not acted in the best interests of tlie Dominion and that he will take such action" as will result In the man having the six months he wants. This country should "not be open to a charge by its enemies that it is devoid of gratitude to the men who are upholding justice, honour, freedom and liberty nor should it be given „to anti-conscriptionists to taunt the Government with sending men from essential industries to the front while encouraging any form of shirking by non-essentials,,, ~