COMPULSORY SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 June 1916, Page 3

COMPULSORY SERVICE.

LABOR'S OBJECTIONS, (Special Correspondent), Wellington, May 2fl. The protest of the Point Elizabeth and State Collieries Union is a typical example of the protests against compulsory military service that are being made by disgruntled people belonging to one class or another throughout the country. These people may be inspired by the very best motives in the world, but they certainiy are not guided by an intelligent understanding of the position. New Zealand has committed itself to certain obligations in connection with the war which cannot be postponed for a year or a month or even for | a single day. The rcspon-e to the call for volunteers has been magnificent—in its way as magnificent as the response at Home—and it still is possible that compulsion will not be requireil. That will depend largely upon people who so far have done nothing by precept or practice to encourage recruit-ins. If the workers' unions, would display officially the splendid patriotism that has taken thousands of the members to the front tbev very soon would shame the shirkers and slackers into doing their duty. But this is no time to be arguing about the matter in a narrow, carping, controversial spirit. The way to save voluntaryism is to volunteer. If t!ie Government could be sure of getting sufficient recruits to discharge the dominion's obligations to the Mother Country it would have no desire to apply compulsion Sentiment, tradition, expediency all incline the other way But the Government cannot be sure of getting the men required while shirkers and slackers and thoughtless indifferent people hang back The reinforcements P.re going inlo camp short of their quotas and their numbers have to he made up by special appeals involving delays and anxieties which are good neither for the generil organisation nor for the efficiency of tlie men The Government is simply seeking to gnard against those undesirable contingencies by taking authority to call lip under a perfectly equitable system the number ei men needed to fill up the vacancies. Of eeurse, this is compulsion—conscription if the critics -please—but it also is a sane, l««ical way of distributing the burden of Empire and achieving equality of sacrifice N« distinctions will be Made between the classes, rich and poor will be equally liable to service and their tasks and rewards will be precisely the same The official representatives of the West Coast miners cannot even have read the provisions of the Military Seryice Bill when they framed their protest There is not a. single word in the measure threatening the. democratic rights on which they properly set surli store, nor a single sentence suggesting the substitution of military rule for civil authority. The law will be made liy civilians and its administration will he entrusted to civilians, while both tlie civil Parliament and the civil Government will remain under tlie control of the civil peo.pie. Compulsory military service may be, even in the«e circumstance'., a disagreeable necessity, bnt'it certainly will not be tyrannous nor subversive of any popular liberty.