MILITARY TRAINING.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1919, Page 7

MILITARY TRAINING.

(Published by Arrangement.) Sir, —The Liberal candidate for Egmont continues to decry military training, and to talk glibly about the folly of sending our Dons and brothers to a training camp. Now, the outlined scheme provides that the camp shall last for two months the first year, fourteen days in the second, and fourteen days in the third year when the period of training ends. Is that too big a price to pay for the safeguarding of our freedom? In our preparedness surely lies our safety. Why should this candidate seek to make party capital out of a question which so vitally affects every member of the community, and should therefore, bo independent of party? But dissension is apparent in the Liberal ranks, even on this question, for the Hon. J. A. Hanan stated at Invercargill that he would ke in favor of reverting to the pre-war system of

territorial training with its seven years of ineffective work. One cannot con- *• ceive the late Mr. E. J. Seddon, that sturdy Lancashire man, who styled, thin ' country of ours, "God's Own Country" s being content to leave it unprepared for 9 defence. Bather can one, in fancy hear , him thundering forth those grand '; words:. — "Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said This ia my own, my native land." \> and demanding its preservation. It is upon the sympathies of women '» that the opponents of military training chiefly seek to play, and arguments as e to the hardships and dangers of camp 11 life for their sons are emphasised. Now, " sir, no mother worthy to bear pons held hers back when the question of defending the Empire last arose, and had Britain's sons all been trained then, '• many homes would have, been less deso- ,• late to-day. To be fore-warned is to '■ be fore-armed, and one such lesson r should suffice- When our own loyal ' sons and brothers nobly took part iu the " recent war, who held aloof? Why, the shirker, the conscientious objector, the y anti-conscriptionist, and the disloyalist, and it is into the hands of such as these the anti-militarists play. I trust, sir, that women, at any rate, will reflect on what might happen should these anti"s militarists obtain their ends. Surely " the safety of each one is dependent upon 7 the protection 'of our country from an '' enemy. Let us remember the fate of ir those women in Belgium who fell into ■S the hands of the invading Hun, and T > see to it that we Teton a representative anxious to see our sons trained to defend their country, and so preserve us from a 'like fate should the need arise.—l am, etc., JUST A WOMAN. Matapu, Dec. 4.