WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 March 1916, Page 7

WAR NOTES.

IF. CONSCRIPTION COMES. j If compulsion comes it should come I sternly and drastically. It should be no respecter of persons, or considerer of convenience, or acceptor of excuses. It I should take the clerk out ef the office and the associate frsm the judge, and the milker from the dairy, and the craftsman from the warksh'op, and the minister from his pulpit, and the motorman from the car, and the student from' the university, and the surveyor from the field, and the letter-carrier'from his round, and the policeman from his beat, and the civil servant f>'om' the "state," impartially and unfalteringly, according to dependents, grade by grade. Say, from i'\ as a start, downwards and upwards, year for year—but that is drifting into details, and the principle is the thing, lint here is the point? Should we need compulsion at all it we realised generally that every man's supreme duty in national need is to fight for the State and to save its life and not to study first his own safety, his own in- ' clinations, or his own interests'; If it were understood that compulsion would simply enforce that clear duty, systematically upon all who are fit, should we have as much "shirking" or as much nonsensical talk about men being "needed at home"? And of this we may be sure, if the war is not won in 1910, the time will eo.me when, without compulsion, every man worth calling a man who has not put on the uniform will hurry to put his name down, and when all the discoi'""""*; ffill very carefully forget that tney ever did any discouraging or thought any eligible man couldn't be spared.—"Tohunga," in Auckland. Herald,