CHALLENGE TO UNFIT MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1918, Page 7

CHALLENGE TO UNFIT MEN.

To tho Editor. Sir, —Although tho Government lias made no demands upon the men classed C2 by the medi.a.l boards which) in any sense requires them to take a, real part in the war, there is surely no reason why the men themselves, if their patriotism is genuine, should not effect some organisation by which they could render service to tho dependents of the fit men who have to leave homes and families and lake up the burden of fighting. No sacrifice whatever ran bo comparable to that of the men whoso service ia offered (or demanded) for his country, and no contribution made to any funds for the dependents of fighting men can place a man on the same footing as his soldierbrother. Keither will contributions received from such fluids compensate a wife for having to give up her husband, or children for being deprived of a father and all that paternal influence means to them in their early years. It might well have been provided, Sir, that every man eligible for service should he required to make some real sacrifice. The man unlit for active service might with every justification have been required to contribute to an equalisation fund which could have been utilised for the dependants uf the fit men. Notwithstanding all (he provision that has been mode for financial assistance, very few of tho dependents of fit men will be left in as good a financial position as before the reservist's enlistment. And even if they were there is still the biglbalance to their disadvantage of the absence of husband and father. However, Sir, I suppose it is too late now to expect the Government to move in such a direction, and as the unfit men themselves have made no offer in that direction, things will just have to remain as they are. aid tho fit men and their dependents continue to Bear an unequal and an unjust burden of sacrifice. There is still opportunity, though, for the unfit men to show their mettle in matters of personal service on behalf of the men who have to go and fight for them. In these times when the cost of living presses hard everywhere and no one feels this more than the dependents of men who have to leave home to fight—it is & common duty upon every householder to cultivate the garden plot to its full capacity. But who, Sir, will tend the gardens of the heads of households who are taken away to fight? Moreover there are other little duties about a home which | every man performs, which will make tho lot of the women whose husbands are taken away doubly hard. If the men who are unable to take up arms sense the needs in this direction they will at once combine, of their own volition, and not wait for compulsion, and see that the wives of fighting men are not allowed to carry a burden winch should never be put upon them. I should think something might be done through the elder boys in'the schools and the Boy | Scouts, in the matter of forming woodchopping brigades, and such like. How- ' ever, there it is, Sir. The call is to the men who cannot go and fight, and it thev respond they will be as truly serving* their country as if they took up any other war work. They would, true _to their classification, be performing "home service:"—l am, etc., FIT A.