CIVILIANS IN WAR.

Wairarapa Age, 7 March 1927, Page 5

CIVILIANS IN WAR.

THE FRENCH ARMY Bill.

QUESTION OF IMMUNITY. AN IMPORTANT IMPLICATION. PARIS, March 4. The Chamber of Deputies resumed its debate on the Military Reorganisation Bill. Discussion, centred on the first article establishing the principle that every citizen, irrespective of age or sex, must serve in war time. The objection was raised that this would suppress the principle of non-combatants* right to protection under The Hague Convention. Therefore in future wars Lusitanias could be sunk and women deported for war work, without protest. Following a long discussion, the article was amended to declare that every; citizen must serve: “Either as a combatant or non-combatant.” The debate showed that the Government recognise that in future wars no State will bo able to pledge the safety of civilians and that the enemy will not distinguish between uniform, and mufti and men and women.—(A. and N.Z.)

A MAD RACE. WORSE THAN BEFORE THE WAR. (Received Sunday, 5.5 p.m.) ROME, Marcn 4. The French Army debate, reported from Paris, has elicited strong criticism in Rome, where the official Fascist organ alludes to the tragi-comedy enacted in old democratic Europe, which after “asphyxiating every corner of the horizon with the Pacifist fumes of Locarno,” has now started on a mad race of armaments worse than before. The newspaper “Popolo d’ltalia declares that the French expenditures on arm?|nients have no par allel in German militarism even before the war.—(A. and N.Z.\