MILITARY SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 February 1917, Page 2

MILITARY SERVICE.

AN EFFICIENT SYSTEM. | (From Our Own Correspondent). Wellington, Feb. 2. AYIk'U the. Hilitary Service Act cauio into operation, the Recruiting Branch consisted of three men sitting in a small mom at Defence Headquarters. Tlifir task was to devise a system, engage end train a staff and generally create the organisation that would enable the mobilisation of New Zealand's ablebodied manhood for war to proceed. Today the Recruiting Branch contain) at least seventy persons, male and female, and the system it has evolved is astonishing in its completeness and its aeon acy. The public hears a good deal of the occasional mistakes, due usually to the fault of the reservists themselves in supplying inaccurate or incomplete names' and addresses, but it does not hear of the hundred successes A visitor to the Recruiting Branch tlie other day thought to test the soundness of the records system that has been evolved in a brief period of montlu. So he asked how many chimney sweeps had been drawn in the ballots, for it is the boast of the branch that detailed information of that kind is always available. The answer came within twenty seconds: ,: Two, one in the first ballot and oue in the second." Ami one chimney ••weep was passed fit and the other was rc.ji.etod. If the Branch were asked to supply a complete list of the dairy farmers who have been summoned to camp it could do so in a moment. Or it could supply a list of the dairy farmers who had been declared unfit, or of the shorthand writers who were available for Home Service, or of the brass fitters who are within the reach of the Defence Department. Records of that kind are going to be worth their weight in gold to New Zealand presently.