WE WANT MORE RECRUITS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 300, 28 May 1915, Page 8

WE WANT MORE RECRUITS.

EXPLANATION BY DEFENCE JILNISTJiB, (liy Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) 'Wellington, Last Night. Many people were startled to read in the newspapers the other day that there was a shortage of recruits and tliat the .Minister for Defence was calling upon married men to come forward. Tlie impression liad prevailed previously that the Government did not want to enlist married men and that there were still plenty of unmarried recruits coming forward to fill the ranks. As a mat"ter of fact, tlie Minister's words had been misconstrued to some extent by the reporter responsible for the original article. The 'Minister wanted more recruits then and he wants them now, but he was not asking married men lo fill vacant places in the ranks. Before there is a direct appeal to married men to come forward, there is likely to be a modification of the regulations in regard to recruits generally,' with the object of making room for the unmarried nieii who havo been ruled out for some reason not amounting to an actual unfitness for service. The age standard, the height standard, and other conditions are all capable of modification without appreciably affecting the general fitness of the recruits. The fact that no move has been made in these directions is an indication that the Dominion has not yet begun to experience an actual shortage of recruits. Tlie Minister of Defence explained the position in an interview with your correspondent. " I have no reason t» <?oubt that sufficient men will be availablo for tlie units that are going into camp at the end of this month and th« beginning of next month," he said. ■' Those units comprise the two additional infantry battalions and the seventh reinforcements, and they wiJl bring the number of men in training at Trentham to about 7000, tlie highest number we have had since the war begun. I want to make this perfectly clear. I did not make any special appeal to married men. I made a special appeal to the unmarried men, and I was iteked what was my opinion with regard to the married men. I said that each man ought to decide for himself where his duty lay. I said that we wanted a large number of men, and that it was harder te get them than it had been in the early days of the recruiting campaign. "I am not frightened that we are not going to get the men we want. The only alteration wo have macfe !n the conditions of service since tlie beginning of the war has been the raising of the age limit from thirty-five to forty years, and we niado that change because we thought it a reasonable thing that a man of from thirty-five to forty years should be allowed to go to the front if he wanted to do so. Many additional men could bo secured at once by a modification of the conditions. It ought not to go forth that the men of this Dominion are not doing their duty. The fact is that our b?g effort —the raising of an additional force of 2500 men over and above the ordinary monthly reinforcement drafts—has been made successfully, and the men will be in camp within a week or two. Xow we have to provide for future reinforcement drafts. but the number of msn required within a given period will not be nearly so large as it has been during tlie last few weeks. We want more recruits. We want every man qualified to serve and able to go to the front to icgister his name. Many thousands of additional recruits will be wanted this year. But Ido not want it to be understood that I have said there is a shortage at the present time. So far, we have done everything that we undertook to do in the despatch of troops."