TRUTH ABOUT THE CADETS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 16 November 1912, Page 4

TRUTH ABOUT THE CADETS.

General Sir Jan Hamilton says: — "Fundamentally our voluntary army system is conceived on right lines, but actually we must learn to focus our efforts, or we perish. School cadet corps, boys' brigades, church lads' brigades, and boy scouts, have -a direct bearing on war and on the defences of the country. The pretence that drill, scouting, first aid to the wounded'are meaningless exercises, that they have nothing to do with war, that the boys taking part in them are shams—hlank cartridges, smoke and noise, no hullet's—excludes the finest idea that can be put into a boy's head, the idea that each male citizen holds his life in fief for IoV

country. Why not tell the: simple truth, that the- Stat© sets the highest value—some £70,000,000 or £BO,000.OIK) per annum, to put it in terms of cash—upon tins acquisition of the arts of defence ;i nd attack ? Why not? Because many of the amateurs who have started these corps 'hesitate to 'ountemnico «) much as the word 'corporal.' In England we have the •nthusiasts who entice- the boys into earps by using the panoply of war as a bait, intending all the time to turn them into plaster saints. What remedies have we? Honesty is the best —tho only—remedy. Look tilings fair and square- in tho face and press for compulsory cadet training in all schools, public or private. A halt must be called in the practice of pretending that c.idet corps are aiming at nothing more serious than physical i drill."