VOLUNTARY SYSTEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 4

VOLUNTARY SYSTEM

DEFENDED BY PREMIER FAITH IN THE AVERAGE NEW ZEALANDER. PLANNING FOR AFTER-WAR PERIOD. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. "I am not prepared to admit that the average New Zealander has lost his sense of proportion, as I feel he must realise that if he does not enlist and go where the war is now, he will eventually have to enlist and fight a.lone hand if he stays at home,” declared the Prime Minister, Mr Savage, when expressing in an interview yesterday the firm belief that all the men needed for all arms of the service would be forthcoming under the voluntary system. “Without the assistance of Great Britain export becomes an impossibility, and without export the whole of our economic life will be strangled,” Mr Savage said. “It. is only by sending our produce to Great Britain that we can hope to get machinery and raw materials to build the nation that we have talked so much about. “I have no more love for war than the average man. Every person who knows me knows my views on this subject, but is absolutely essential that we get the men, and the Government intends to make an immediate drive for recruits. I have sufficient confidence in the young men of this country to believe that they will enlist knowing the responsibility which they carry.”

Mr Savage emphasised again that there was to be more equality of sacrifice. He was not going to ask men to go abroad and fight for New Zealand with the prospect of returning to participate in the burden of huge war debts. "The Government is already planning for the after-war period,” he said. "It is a big job, but it has to be faced,”