MILITARY DEFAULTERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1918, Page 2

MILITARY DEFAULTERS.

ERBBMSNG THE LIST. ••! (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Dec. 17. _ The preparation of the defaulters' list provided far in the Expeditionary Forces Amendment Bill, ju-sed last session, will necessarily be ti o\v business. The penalties to be imposed on defaulters axe, severe and the authorities are anxious to mate as few mistakes as possible. Some mistakes are inevitable, since the gazetting of a man as a defaulter proves occasionally to be the sole means of discovering his whereabouts. Much inquiry has been made by .the staff of the Director of Personal Services, who has been responsible for tho tracing of missing reservists, but the investigations will be pushed further where there is any prospect of success in doubtful cases. The number of reservists called 'ballot or otherwise and not accounted for i 3 in the neighbourhood of 2000. But it does not follow that all the men are defaulters. Some probably are dead. Some had left the country in a legitimate way before the Military Service Act came in to operation. Some are in the forces, and have not been traced owing to mistakes and omissions in the recording of names. It is exceedingly diiiicult to trace a man who . enrolled as John Smith and then enlisted as John James Smith; Then there is reason to believe that some of the names in tne roll of defaulters are entirely fictitious. They represent the efforts of humorists who gave wrong names when filling up national register forms. A suggestion made by the Secretary of the Seamen's Union that military defaulters should be released from prison in order to relieve the shortage of firemen in the coastal service does not meet with the approval of, the Minister for Defence. Sir James Allen is strongly of opinion that none of the military defaulters should be released until the last of tho soldiers have been returned to civilian life a day sooner than the men who fought. Many of the defaulters will have completed their terms of imprisonment in the ordinary way before demobilisation is completed.