NATIONAL SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 308, 21 May 1913, Page 3

NATIONAL SERVICE.

LORD ROBERTS' CAMPAIGN. London, May 5. Lord Roberts brought his compulsory service campaign to a close in Glasgow to-day. Speaking at a meeting to which many thousands were unable to gain admission, the veteran soldier, after reviewing past attempts at voluntary defence, said:— "From everywhere there comes to us the sound of the arming of men—from France, from Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria, and our very colonies. The distant outworks of the Empire are beginning to recognise the duty and the honor of national training. "In Australia, New Zealand and South -Africa a citizen army is already arising, but we—we Britishers who are warders of this vast Empire's very centre—we who are Britain's garrison, as it were, of its inmost fort and citadel—we alone sit in complacent indifference, blind to the significance of the time, insensible to warnings that come to us alike from friends and foes.

"If through remissness disaster should overtake us, it will not be the futures of these islands alone that will be reversed; the Empire itself will dissolve, and its greatness willVcome a mere memory in the wreckage of time."