WANTED-MORE MEN!

Taranaki Daily News, 9 January 1917, Page 6

WANTED-MORE MEN!

THE BRITISH PROBLEM. BLACKS IN WARFARE. (Sydney Sun's London Correspondent). The British armies want at loast another million men. Some experts put tlie figure nt three millions, and there can be no doubt that complete victory would be more iiniekly achieved if we added three r.ii' as to the War Office's forces, than if \ had only one milion. Put where are i!:> y to come from? The War Office point ; to the 3j.i0'(),000 exempt from military service, and asks whether a million men cannot be gathered from them. The Ministry of Munitions points !" it- guns, and the Board of Trade to its c--enti:il industries, and each asserts that 110 more men can be spared. We will "get our million men, of course, even if the military age has to be raised and men of -1.1 have to be taken from their homes for such work hi-hiiui the lines as will re'.eise younger men for the battlefields; lmt we are fighting war by sea as well as on land, and in addition \sfr are feeding a population from overseas and are arming ourselves and our Allies. The supply of men is, in fact, becoming restricted I have not heard of any official estimate of the size of the army regarded by Sir Douglas Haig as necessary for tiiat march acros» the Rhine —with cavalry operating in full force—which he confidently expects to occur before the end of the war. But I know that the highest military opinions in Britisli forces concur in the belief that the job can he done, and done thoroughly. We should get into Germany, on some front, next year. And there are good grounds for believing that solid victory would be followed by a quick smash. The Germans are intelligent and practical, and will know that they can gain nothing more by hanging on.

COLORED MAN i POWER A section of the British Cabinet is looking for relief towards the colored man-power of the Empire. It urges that, better late than never, armies should' be recruited from the negroes of Africa, and that native Indian troops should once more be used on European fields'as well as in greater number in the subsidiary expeditions. Mr. Lloyd Gc-orge favors the project. With him he Ims well-known Commoners like Commander Wedgwood and Mr, Giiffiths, and in 'the press his cause is being championed by the Liberal Daily Chronicle. Leading South Africans, including protectors of the blacks, have branded the scheme a practical and fruitful one; hut against it are -arrayed not only the heavy weights of British complacency ,ind 'conservatism, but a strong body of thoughtful and experienced _ legislators. It is claimed with some justice that the work of demolishing the Turkish Empire belonas peculiarly to India, which it constantly threatens; and as we have undertaken to hold Turkish divisions on the Tigris and ultimate!) to drive them beyond Bagdad, the Mesopotamian expedition is coming to he regarded as a field in which large forces of" Indian* should be engaged. _ A considerable section of our expedition there ha-, always been Indian, but the release of white'divisions serving there -would help in France, for much of the workin the Balkans also Indian troops would be particularly valuable. ■ Statisticians are busy showing now millions of black soldiers could be recruited, and Mi". Bonar Law has announced that the Colonial Ofiice has already taken in hand '"a small experiment" involving the enlistment of 10,(ifiu African natives for work behind tnc lines in France. It should be explained that an essential feature of the pioicct. is that blacks should primarily he used for replacing while soldiers behmd the lines, thus relieving fresh battalions ,of the incomparable French soldiers -ioi work in attack. Experience with Indian troops undei heavy sliclllire in France strongly discourages the idea that the blacks can stand" modern warfare, but what Australians saw of the Gurkhas on the 1 oilinsula fighting in August and September of last year must, on the otacr hand have convinced them that for bullets'and bayonets some black races have no fear. I have heard mstnv British speak of the feeling of shame that came over them when in l-rance -we turned to black races for help m uiro trouble. That feeling still exists, am. i a is impossible to imagine Great Britain using either Sikhs or Gurkhas from India, or Basutos, Zulus Matabele.- <>•- Giukas from Africa, on the battlefield, of France. Apart from the wnunu-m----al drawbacks, there are several great practical difficulties-the long time required to train black soldiers, the natural incapacity of the African negro to shoot straight, and the fact that blacks stand neither cold weather nor heavy slipllfire But for war work behind the lines, releasing the many millions of capable white men now engaged therein a stronger ease can be'-made out. Great Britain may some day forget that a nation which forgets the science of warfare, and turns to natiie iioop= and mercenaries for its protection, mevitablv goes down in the struggle o. races. 'But Great Britain has not .oreotten that .yet. The milion? oi kelsons lighting gamely in this war prove that the race still defends upon l.a oivn l.i a wn and bravery. The. reception ol the proposal to recruit the black races , merely means that we are in stmit» . for men.