CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 226, 30 January 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

"HARVEST PLENTEOUS, LABORERS ■FEW." From all over New Zealand comes the wnil that there; is plenty of work and too few people to do it. We have been treated to pathetic pictures of disgusted farmers unable to obtain help giving up farming, of business men abandoning contracts because of a shortage of boys and girls, of harried housewives taking their families to hotels because domestic servants are unobtainable. It is a gratifying feature of this shortage of labor that our productiveness is growing out of proportion to our ability to cope with it. There is no possibility of coping with it by depending on the people now in New Zealand. Presumably the whole working population is employed, or else it would Hock to the harassed farmers, the worried business men and the distracted "missuses." In the Auckland district the shortage of farm hands is a handicap to progress, and the Farmers' Union intend importing batches of men to help them in fulfilling the most important ..mission in life—the production of' food. This decision on the part of a private corporation is a reminder that there does not yet exist any definite State scheme for supplying population from overseas. The country is busy devising mechanical methods for the increase ot production and the paying off of loans, but it is not seriously considered the urgent necessity of manning the country. It is waste of time growing crops that cannot be harvested, cows that cannot be milked or goods that cazi be undersold. If a large and steady influx of people is not induced by every available means, it is ridiculous to proceed with the opening up of lands, the expenditure of money on water supply r.nd increased productiveness, or in any other great undertakings. New Zealand is sufficiently developed to support the few people now resiuing in it, and their painfully slow internal increase, but it is generally so undeveloped that its emptiness cries shame on the powers who, kowtowing to a party, see hurt to a dog in the introduction to the manger of a companion. In the eyes of the world NewZealand must be supremely unimportant if she remains unpeopled, but in the eyes of sqme New Zealanders her importance increases with the means taken for keeping folk out of the Dominion. The three per cent, yearly increase mentioned with satisfaction by the Premier at New Plymouth is a hardly perceptible dribble, and it does not seem to have been sufficient to fill the jobs that are crying out for men.

IN CAMP. These seems to be anxiety, in the minds of some good folk both in the North and in the South that the gathering together of numbers of young men in military camps is bad for them. These anxieties have been expressed possibly because of the alleged failure of some citizen soldiers to behave themselves at a Palmerstou North military gathering. Idle men in the bulk, no matter what their usual occupations are, are liable to conduct themselves in a manner that dissatisfies critics whose knowledge of ' masses of men may or may not lie exI tensive. Under the discipline that a \ proper military system exacts, there is far less chance of young men "going wrong" than there would be under any other circumstances. The Commandant has recently been approached by correspondence, the correspondent intimating the anxiety mentioned above. MajorGeneral Godley, in a courteous and explanatory reply, puts the whole thing in a nutshell when ho says: "There will be little time in the new camps for any other pursuits than soldiering." That is to say, under the new regulations military camps will represent something more than amusement areas for bodies of more or less disciplined young men who are oil' the commercial chain for a I short spell. "Any sign of immorality or. drinking," says the Commandant, "will be severely dealt with and sternly put down." The fact that every man in the camps of the future will be for the time being a soldier, liable to the pains and penalties attaching to military crimes, is the best insurance against breaches of common decency. Men who commit such breaches in camp will commit them elsewhere, but the rigorous discipline that is, happily, to be enforced will, so far from abetting misdeamors, reduce them. The discipline necessary among troops is creative of self-respect. Self-respect and respect for others is a valuable asset to possess in or out of a military service. It can be confidently anticipated that the system now being inaugurated will be of moral and physical advantage to all young men. The man who lacking outside control cannot heihave himself will be forced to do so ■when lie is wearing the King's livery, land may by this means learn that in [all the relations of life, whether military or civil, the precepts learnt under stern discipline can be affectively applied generally. In allegations made against military camps, anxious folk frequently paint the mass sable because some of i(s components are blask. It has never been a (■(million thing in New Zealand earnns for soldiers to show neueral insobriety or immorality, and there is no organisation that possesses such power r.f instant punishment as a military organisation. And we are assured that the "short and sharp" methods of the British Army will be quite effective in puttinu down evils which are equally j obnoxious ki civilian life as in military. I