THE SECOND DIVISION.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 February 1917, Page 4

THE SECOND DIVISION.

THE GRADING OF MARRIED MEN. FIEST BALLOT PROBABLY IN AUGUST. (From Our Own Correspondent). Wellington, February 15. Tho. number of fit men available for service among the remaining reservists of the First .Division eannot be gauged with certainty, but the Defence authorities have indicated already that the lirst call upon the Second Division (the married men) is likely to he made about live months hence. The adoption of a vigorous comhing-out policy in exempted trades and Government departments might put back the date a month, but it does not appear likely that the Second Division men can be kept out of the ballot after August next in any case.

The men enrolled in the Second Division are being classified according to the size of their families, and it has been suggested, though no official statement has been made on the point, that they will be ballotted by classes, the men without children first, th|cn the men with one child each, the men with two children, and so on. Perhaps the men without children and the men with one child will form a group. The size of these classes is not indicated at all clearly in the available statistics, and calculations are subject to several disturbing factors, such as the voluntary enlistment of married men during the last thirty months and the placing of men married since April, 1915, in the First Division. But it appears that there are from SOOO to 10,01)0 men of military ago married without children available for the ballot, and the number may prove larger. The number of married men with one child should exceed 15,000, and probably there are at least as many men in the next group, the men with two children.

The military medical authorities arc disposed to believe, from the evidence already before them, that the proportion o£ rejections among ballotted married men will be much smaller than among ballotted single men. The First Division had provided more than 50,000 fit recruits before baHotting commenced, and the Ijne response of the volunteers naturally lowered the physical average of the division, which still contained all the men who had been rejected under the voluntary system. The exhaustion of the First Division will be completed over the whole Dominion before any Second Division men are .drawn. This is likely to entail the temporary suspension of the quota system, since the districts will not all finish their First Division men in the 6ame month. 'Districts in which voluntary recruiting lias been particularly good may escape one ballot, or even two ballots, while the remaining' First Division men are being drawn in other districts. All parts of the country will start level in dealing with the married men.