THE CALL FOR MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 March 1916, Page 7

THE CALL FOR MEN.

To the Editor. Sir, —According to »u article in Saturday's News, Mr. C. H. Poole, M.P., for an Auckland constituency, has been holding forth to a Star representative on ltig experiences during a "recruiting tour in the Taranaki district." He talks about Taranaki's failure to find its share of the Wellington district quota, and says that he has been asked to return to New Plymouth at an early date to deliver further appeals to our backward eligibles. It is very well for Mr. Poole to thus advertise himself in his local paper, to those upon whose votes his livelihood depends, but it is rather rough on us Taranaki folk and ungenerous to his late hosts, that this selfconstituted recruiting agent should try to belittle Us in a. fashion which we certainly do not deserve. If my information is correct, Mr. Poole's "recruiting tour in the Taranaki district" was undertaken entirely on his own initiative and may be attributed to the advantages of free travel on a M.P.'s pass and the hospitality of the friends with whom he has been spending the last few weeks. While he was here the compliment was paid him as a visiting member of Parliament, of inviting him to jpeaJj at patriotic gatherings at two or three country centres, and 110 doubt the settlers were very pleased t» havo him with them. It would be interesting to learn who asked him to return to Xew Plymouth at an early date, and whether the Recruiting Board has any knowledge of such an invitation. Moat of us know the reason why some little temporary difficulty has been experienced in making up recent Taranaki's quotas—is it not because our district has, time after time, from the commencement of the war, sent far more than its due proportion to join the colors, and that consequently we are not to-day in an equally favorable -position with other areas in the Dominion whsae eligibles have been holding back? I have not the figures at hand at the moment, but am under the impression that Taranaki has so far beaten all other areas on a population basis and that we are still holding our own in spite of the large numbers sent away in the earlier contingents, and in spite of the mismanagement which has all along characterised the central office at Haw era, and done so much to discourage recruiting in thifi district. Mr. Poole's flapdoodle and invidious comparisons are untimely arid it is a pity that he should create iil-feeling' just when we ought all to be pulling together for the common good.—l am, etc., , F. P. CORKILL.