COMPULSORY SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1940, Page 4

COMPULSORY SERVICE

MR J. A. LEE PROPOSES REFERENDUM.

NO SECONDER IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. An amendment providing for a referendum before men should be conscripted for service overseas was moved by Mr Lee (Democratic Labour —Grey Lynn) during the second reading of the Emergency Regulations Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives last night. The amendment lapsed for want of a seconder. Mr Lee criticised the Government’s proposal to set up a War Council. It was proposed to invest this organisation with powers that placed it above Parliament in authority, he said, but there were good members of the House on both sides who could give valuable service without setting up an outside organisation. He thought there might ; come a time when it would be neces- * sary to introduce compulsory military service, but that did not mean that people should become hysterical. He did not believe that, with the situation as it was, there was any need for New Zealand to be bled white, and before he would agree to a blanket conscription provision he wanted to know what our commitments were. That was a point on which no information was available.

Mr Lee concluded with an apeal to people not to adopt a defeatist attitude because of the course of the war, but to believe that Britain would come through successfully.