The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1915. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SOUTH?

Taranaki Daily News, 27 October 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1915. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SOUTH?

The South Island is not doing its duly in the matter of the reinforcements. For tiie Tenths, the North Island is finding practically all the men. Wellington is finding MSO, Auckland a similar number, and the South Tsland about 200! Taranaki is contributing 400, ov double the number of the South Island, which was also deplorably behindhand with the Eighth Reinforcements. Nearly half of the men required were found by. Hie 'Wellington district (which includes Taranaki). For the last three forces (the Eighth Reinforcements, infantry for Ninth and extra battalions, and Tenth Infantry and Mounted) the districts have been called on approximately a* follows: —• Auckland 2695, Wellington +l2O, Canterbury 2065, Otago i 330. But the South lias failed to fill even these quotas. The southern newspapers give as reasons for this poor response that there are no camps there, nor any incentive for young men lo enlist, and the Press is busy inviting the Prime Minister and Defence Minister to visit them and stir things up. But these are hardly valid reasons. Taranaki his no camp and is as far from Trentham as is Christchurch, but all the same it is sending its full quota, and more, for (frery .Reinforcement. What is wrong with the South? Its duty it clear. Surely it will not continue to allow the North to fill up its quotas. To this there must come an end, and then will have to be considered the question of compelling the unwilling eligible men to do their duty. In any case, it is difficult to see how we' are going to maintain our Reinforcements for more than another year without resorting to compulsion in some form or other. Valuable time is meantime being lost by the inability of the Minister for Defence to rise to the need of the hour and compel all ablebodied men to prepare themselves for the Great Emergency, by drilling at nights and shooting on half-holidays, Had this been done from the beginning our men need not have stopped so long at Trentham and would have been better equipped to face the enemy. Possibly it would also have brought tha southern folk to a realisation of what they owe to their country.