MILITARY TRAINING NECESSARY.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1919, Page 5

MILITARY TRAINING NECESSARY.

I TO BUILD UP MANHOOD. A TRIBUTE TO COLONIALS. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. At the annual meeting of the Wellington Officers' Institute to-night a welcome was profferred to Brigadier-General Richardson. In his reply, the Brigadier urged that the system of training would be maintained in this country. The country could not afford to be without adequate defence. All sorts of wild ideas had got about that there was to be no compulsory training after the war; that armies would not be needed, and that the Peace Conference would forever limit the military force to the performance of mere police duties. Those who thought and who could visualise ;the future would never submit to the abolition of a military force designed purely for defence. In addition to the necessity of having a force, there was to be considered its value in building up the youth of the nation. Hq believed Jthat in England the greater percentage of men examined for military service had been classed physically as lower than A (they had been marked C 3); that was why so much had been said about England being a C 3 nation. If the system of compulsory training were used for nothing but the building up of the nation's manhood, the money spent upon it would be well invested. He did not know what percentage of rejected there had been in this country, but he was certain that the system of training employed had been largely responsible for the fact that New Zealand had been able to send away such a fine body of men. It had been one of the surprises of the authorities in .the Old Country that draft after draft had shown practically no diminution in physique. He urged that the system that had been in vogue here! should continue, and that the Territorial Force should be maintained. j I