THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1909. OUR NATIONAL SAFETY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3203, 1 June 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1909. OUR NATIONAL SAFETY.

Canon Mac Murray, of Auckland, pertinently remarked a year ago that "The National League o£ New Zealand owes its birth to the growing sense of insecurity which prevails among thinking people in the Dominion. That the policy of a white New Zealand and a White .Australia is resented fiercely in the ' hearts of the people of the East there can be no doubt. . . . During the next fifty years the issue will be raised and probably settled whether white civilisation is to prevail in these southern seas, and history tells us that no civilisation has ever endured for long the stress ot trial unless it was physically and morally strong. When a community is more anxious about, and takes more pains to secure, its wealth, its ease, and its comforts, rather than those qualities of body and mind which make it capable of self-defence, then its peril becomes very imminent." To-night the public of Masterton and surrounding districts will have the pleasure of hearing Mr McNab upon the question, of universal training. In matters appertaining to the defence of country, party politics do not enter, and even if Mr McNab is to be regarded as a party politician, he is, at anyrate, of such a stamp we are speaking generally, of course—that any party would be proud to claim him. Mr McNab is a patriot with energy, and possesses undoubted ability, while his personal reputation causes him to be respected throughout the Dominion. His address tonight will be of a capable and instructive character, and we trust that he will be greeted with a very large and enthusiastic audience. Seeing that the nresent is an exceptionally suitable occasion to refer to universal training, we venture to describe the system that is being advo-

cated, and in doing so are quoting ■ from "Defence," the official organ of the League. Morally, universal defensive training will instil habits of self-reliance and of mutual understanding. It will teach lads and young men that there is something bettpr than idling or sporting; that the~strong "should protect the weak; that to obey lawful commands is as honourable as to give lawful commands; and that strength should be held as a sacred trust for the protection of human rights and happiness. Physically, it will develop the stamina of our people as nothing else can. For all lads will train ar.d none will look on. It will harden the muscles, straighten the body, brighten the eyes, and clear the brain. It will take the stoop out of stooping shoulders, and add inches to chest measurements. It will make our lads into young men who can walk all day without tiring, and who can handle a rifle at the butts with keen eyes and steady hands. It will not only make them fit to defend their country and its homes, but fit to have wives and homes and children of their own. Industrially, universal training will make better employers and better workmen,,better clerks, better mechanics, better farmers, and better professional men. For it will restore the physical energy and vim which so many lose in merely sordid pursuits, and will help to make ( everybody understand that everything should be done with a sense of duty, and not for the purely selfish reason of profit to ourselves alone. Socially, it will further that goodfeeling which is the source of all social good. Every class will stand shoulder to shoulder in the ranks, thus realising the meaning of comrade' ship. During training the citizensoldiery will be in the common uniform and be released from the superficial distinctions of ordinary life; which,'under discipline, is asserted by the Swiss pastors and priests, Protesta nt and Catholic, to be wholly beneficial. Colonel Fermaud, the Y.M.C.A. world's secretary, declares the moral and social results of uni* versal training, as he knows it in Switzerland, to be wholly good. Nationally, universal defensive training is the first thing necessary to our national salvation. It will make our unorganised, undisciplined, unarmed, defenceless people into an organised, disciplined, armed and defensive nation. It will secure our land a2d our laws from foreign domination, our homes from violation, our prosperity from destruction, our progress from interference. It will save us from assaults that sooner or later are bound to be made upon all defenceless states It will ensure to us the liberties which we enjoy, the privileges that only belong to the independent, and the rights that are always torn away from those who cannot keep them. Imperially, uni- • versal defensive training will help to remove from us the stigma that we only hide behind the skirts of the Mother Country, and do practically nothing towards upheldingthe Empire within whose frontiers we find peace. At least, we ought to so train and arm our youth that in the Empire's need we shall not become panicstricken if the navy is sent to some strategic point far away.