THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1907. UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8465, 15 June 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1907. UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING.

Many, people, j.confuse universalmilitarytraining with;: cortsCription. The two things,'* are, however; quite different. Conscription means filling the ranks of the army by compulsion after the Continental method. Universal military training means that the youth of a nation a practical knowledge of the use of arms and of military movements, so that in supreme need they could render their country effective service in resisting invasion. . The London Spectator, which condemns conscription and advocates compulsory military training for the *whole of the male population before they reach the age of 21, puts the matter very clearly. Weni advocate, it says, such training on three grounds; The first and most important ground, in our opinion, is that such training will produce beneficial results of a very marked kind, moral, intellectual, and physical, in the youth of the nation. We hold that the man who has had, not military training of the Continental kind, which means confinement for a couple of years in barracks, but compulsory military training of the kind we desire, will be in every way a better citizen, and that, even if he is never called upon to make any direct use of his military training, the State as a whole will have gained and not lost, by having given him such training. Secondly, we advocate universal training on the ground that, should a great national emeigency arise, and should thousands, or we will say hundreds of thousands, of citizens desire to help the Motherland in arms, such volunteers will be able to offer aid that is worth having owing to their training, and not to tender simply the pathetically worthless aid of a mere patriotic'sentiment. The State should say to the citizen: "You may some day desire to give us your aid in a moment of peril. We

will take care that you shall that case, suffer the humiliation of offering what is not immediately worth having—the services of a man who cannot shoot and who does not know the elements of soldiering, and is, therefore, quite unfit to take his stand in the national ranks." Thirdly, we advocate universal training because such a system of universal training as we desire would, in case of actual'invasion, give us, in the first place, a 1 coherent and organised military force in the shape of the men undergoing training, and, further, would make a levee en masse, should a levee en masse be called for, not a worthless mob, but the raw material out of which efficient armies could be created with comparative ease.