THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 19, 1908. AUSTRALIA SHOWS THE WAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9092, 19 May 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 19, 1908. AUSTRALIA SHOWS THE WAY.

The military correspondent of the London "Times," in a long article, entitled "Armed Australia," reviews in terms of high praise Mr Deakin's defence scheme, and tiays: —If Mr Deakin and his colleagues succeed in passing this great measure they will win imperishable renown and will give the Old Country a lead that is badly wanted. Deakinise the Haldane plan and what more is needed? If, after leaving our elementary schools, young fellows, between the ages of 13 and 18, could be caught up, through the agency of the Board of Education, by some extension of the many voluntary organisations which already exist; if on their Saturday afternoons and holidays they could one and all, instead of only a few, be drawn away from factories of Hooliganism', and receive manly training in senior cadet corps all over the kingdom, the youth of England would become the pride of ita country, instead of being, as too much of it is, eloppy, unkempt, slack, round-shouldered, loafing, and debauched. If again, between the ages of 18 and 21, the senior cadets, were passed on automatically into

their country regiments of the territorial army, and given a few weeks of serious military training every year, there is not a pa-ent or an employer of labour in the country who would not in the end bless tho statesman who created such a revolution in the physical development, character, and conduct of the young apprentices in all trades. But these things seem far from us! We must not militarise youth. It is a cardinal sin. Nonconformity says so, and the trail of the Puritan is over us yet. We must not teach them to use arms for fear lest they should shoot their grandmothers. We must not enable them to defend their country, because Lord Roseberry's four million German soldiers might consider it a reflection upon their good intentions. Wd must not make them well set-up, bright, alert, and amendable to discipline, because the cult of that brazen serpent Liberty demands that everyone shall do what seems to him good, especially when it is bad. So the average boy of the working classes, after leaving his primary school, is to be allowed to run to seed, if it be his sovereign will and pleasure; to learn nothing, to do nothing, and to be nothing; and, finally, to join the ranks ot the unemployed, or to pass from the reformatory to the prison, and from the workhouse to a pauper's grave. Australia has not to contend, as we have, with all this superannuated tomfoolery, which, together with the infatuated suspicion of the regular soldier, comes down to us from the darkest ages of the remote past, and i 3 simply the result of the blackest ignorance. Australia looks facts squarely in the face, and takes her measures accordingly. Knowing well that a nation in arms has the last word in the strife of people, and the shock of interests, she prepares to become cne, and asks her sons to scout and flout the example of a phrase-ridden Motherland, and to give something to a country which gives everything to them.