MILITARY SERVICE BILL.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 August 1916, Page 3

MILITARY SERVICE BILL.

STATEMENT BY THE PREMIER. IMPORTANT TO SINGLE MEN. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington. August 10. Mr. W. P. Massey, chairman of the Recruiting Board, forwards the following to the press:— From time to time since the initiation of the new recruiting scheme the attention of the Recruiting Beard has been directed to families in different districts of the Dominion with two or more single sons of military age. not one of whom has joined the Expeditionary Force under the voluntary'principle of enlistment. Of course it was impossible for the board to take any action in these cases as the decision is left entirely to the individual himself, hut. in response to numerous requests that some other steps should he taken to bring home to such men a due sense of their obligation to the State and to their comrades and fellow-citizens who are already at the front, a section has been inserted in the Military Service Act, which empowers the Minister of Defence, if he is satisfied with respect to any familv that it consists of two or more brothers or half-brothers who belong to the first division of the reserve and are not permanently unfit, to bring all or any of those -brothers before a Military Service Board to there show cause why they should not lie called up for service in the Expeditionary Force. The Act having now passed and become statute law it is intended to bring this section into operation as early as possible, and if nnv cases as defined by it are till to be found when the Military Service. Board are set up they will provide the first business for these boards to adjudicate upon.