THE SECOND DIVISION.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 June 1917, Page 4

THE SECOND DIVISION.

PREPARATIONS FOR CALLIN® UP MEK IMPORTANT STATEMENT BY DEFENCE MINISTER. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. An important statement regarding recruiting for the remainder of the Expsditionary Force reserve wu made to A reporter by the Minister of Defense today. "It has already been announced that we have stopped voluntary recruiting for the First Division. I think in all probability we shall stop voluntary recruiting for the Second Division also. There does not seem to be any good reason for keeping it going, especially as classes m the Second Division will be so small that every man will know about tho time he is likely to be required to go into camp. I think it better we should settle by ballot the time for every man to go. To permit voluntary enlistment would make it necessary ibr us to continue to use the district rolls, but we shall find it more convenient to use only one roll for every class. It would be a great convenience for us to work with single rolls instead of a number of district rolls, because the preparation of these district rolls will be a colossal task, so by that the work could not be done in time.

Regarding the classes of the Second Division all we have to go on now is the National Register and the condition of many of the reservists as to the number of their children will have to be altered since then. We propose to bring our information up to date by issuing to the post offices all over the country cards which the second division men Will be asked to procure and fill in. I don't think the cards aro out yet, but they will be out in a day or two, and they will be returnable by some date to be named. The Government statistician will be ready to commence to make up his rolls by the end of July. It should be understood that We ar? not sending cards X> the men Reservists will have to get them from the post offices. If a man neglects to fill in his card, notifying a change in his condition, and he if. subsequently drawn in the wrong class, he will still have the right of appeal to the Military Service Board. ' "Before we call upon the Second Division we propose to re-examine the men rejected as medically unfit and the C2 men. What we propose to do is to set up a special medical board to go through the medical history sheets of these men, and to pick from among them the names of those men who, in their judgment, would bo again judged medically unfit If they are again examined the C? men will be put into another class, and this latter class will be medically re-examin-ed. The others will be held over in the meantime, and possibly he re-examined later on. The objects of this preliminary classification is to lessen our work. There may be a large number of these medically unlit men, perhaps 60,000 of them, and we shall be able to tackle the work of re-examination better if we divide the men into these two classes first. "You ask me whether it is intended to give any longer notice to Second Division men than has been allowed to First Division men before calling them into camp after they are ballotted. Ah far as I know, we shall call up reinforcements two months before the drafts are required to go into camp. We have not always been able hitherto to give every man his full two months' notice, owing to the necessity for getting thfc men into camp to make up the shortages, but in future we hope to be able to give as nearly as possible two months' notice to every man between the time he is drawn in the ballot and the time be is called into camp. "The First Division will certainly last 8 months longer, and may last three months. We may get another draft out of the men rejected previously as unfit, and out of the reconsideration of the men whoso appeals have been adjourned sine die by the Military Service Boards. We may even get two drafts from these men. This means we may have to draw upon the Second Division in October, and we are almost certain to be drawing upon it in November."