RECRUITING IN CANADA.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 May 1916, Page 3

RECRUITING IN CANADA.

A SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM. "By the voluntary system in Canada we are still enrolling recruits at the rate of 1000 a day," said Gen. Sir Sain Hughes, the Canadian Defence Minister. He has arrived in London upon business which includes a visit to "his boys" at the front. "Compulsion," he said, "is not a live question in Canada if we feel we are getting all the men we want, and the spirit prevailing throughout the country is that it must be a fight to a finish. By our system, now, we take recruiting to the villages, to the doors, instead of a man having to spend perhaps a couple of days reaching his recruiting station." Neither is there any "single men first" agitation in the Dominion; wives offer no objection to their husbands going, and indeed, Sir Sam declared, that one woman had written him saying:—"l want you to enlist my husband and his lawyer, and I hope you will put them in the front line!" As to conscientious objectors, he mentioned that he had some officers who belonged to the Quaker School, and they were just as keen on the cause for which they were fighting as any Canadian could possibly be. To. assist in the harvest operations, soldiers have been released temporarily from training, and the same policy will be pursued at seeding time. Lads between the ages of 10 and 17 from the high schools and teachers are ilso assisting in agricultural work, and retired farmers are returning to the land from the cities. "I think three-fourths of the labor employed on the land could be spared, both in Canada and England, without interfering with the ■liarvesy