COMPULSION IN NEW ZEALAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 May 1916, Page 3

COMPULSION IN NEW ZEALAND.

HOW MEN WILL BE CALLED UP. (Lyttelton Times' Correspondent). Wellington, May f>. The Military Service Bill is not yet in its final shape, so that what can be said of it at the moment is quite tentative. ■ The Prime Minister, who lias charge of this vitally important measure, put his views into shape for the law-drafting authorities, and I understand that the Bill framed provisionally will be open to full discussion and amendment by the Cabinet as a whole. Thus twelve minds will be brought to bear on the big problem, which cannot be settled, as we have settled other war questions, by a simple adoption of the English Act. One important variation from the English method which I hear lias met with general approval ,n the Cabinet is that the voluntary enlistment system will continue to go hand in hand with compulsion, if the latter has eventually to come into operation in New Zealand.

The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence have declared for a method of direct compulsion, the principle to operate only in areas where there are shortages, but this is not likely to get into the Bill. The effect of such a system would be to create what one highplaced eitic calls "cities of refuge," where the shirker will shelter at '"the expense of the willing men who have made up the quota, and it would be hard, to trace these men unless some system of internal passports, more tioublesome than general compulsion itself, is carried out.

There are forty-three classes of eligible men under the English system, the first twenty-three consisting' of single men from the age of eighteen up to forty-three, Group 1 including the men of eighteen and nineteen, and each successive group containing men a year oilier. The married men follow the single in the group order, married men of eighteen and nineteen coming into Group 24. Successive age groups of married men run up to tlie total of forty-six groups. What will probably be adopted in New Zealand is the following category, in which it will be noticed that a. strict dividing line between married and single is not drawn, this being a departure from the English system on which Cabinet is said to agree:— Class I.—Single men without dependents.

Class 2.—Single men with dependents, and married men without children.

Clajs 3.—Married men with less than two children.

Class 4.—Widowers with children. Class s.—Married men with more than two children.

While voluntary enlistment would be open to any man in these groups, the probability is that under compulsion the Government would utilise the ballot in connection with successive groups, commencing with Group 1, to sustain the supply of monthly reinforcements. Exemption tribunals will have to be established under the Act. but as Xew Zealand does not possess a complicated industrial system, closely connected with the supply of war munitions, there will be no need to create machinery so elaborate ai? that in existence in ' England. A few tribunals representative of the leading industries, and the Defence Department, would suffice to deal with this necessary business in New Zealand*