WAR ORGANISATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1942, Page 3

WAR ORGANISATION

AND THE MAINTENANCE OF PRODUCTION NEEDS THAT SHOULD BE RECONCILED. MR. MULHOLLAND PROPOSES RESERVE CORPS. (“Times-Age” Special.) WELLINGTON, This Day. _ Apparently no one had thought it worth while to determine the relation that should be established between production, fighting men and the maximum war effort, the Dominion. President of the Farmers’ Union (Mr W. W. Mulholland) observed in his. address at the annual conference of that organisation today. Yet, he added, an unbalance as between the requirements of the firing line and the production line might be disastrous. “It is of the utmost importance, as we all realise,” Mr Mulholland went on to observe, “to put every man possible into the Army, but ‘every man possible’ means every man that can be put in the Army while still maintaining that production necessary to develop t our fullest strength. “Under the situation that we face in New Zealand, it is obvious that while we need at all times an Army ready to march at the sound of the alarm, there has been no sound reason advanced why we should not increase the number of men who are trained with- a less strain on industry, by giving the essential men of essential industry a reasonable period of training, posting them to reserve —an active reserve —and while they remain members of that active reserve returning them to industry." Steps taken to release men from camp for urgent farm work, Mr Mulholland said, and for certain urgent jobs in other essential industries had been very useful. These steps in fact had prevented a breakdown, or a very near breakdown, in certain important production and services. Only critical labour peaks had been met in this way, however, so far as farms were concerned and no relief had been given in regard to routine farm work which, in the long run, was more essential to the maintenance of production. It was for meeting this great need that the Reserve Corps was suggested. Action that had been taken through the Primary Production Councils to institute appeals for farm workers and, by direction of the War Cabinet, to impose for the moment, a temporary stay-order upon the taking into camp of farm workers, and other attempts to deal with this larger aspect of the problem, said Mr Mulholland, revealed a very real concern on the part of the Government in this matter. Account had to be taken of the psychological aspect so pronounced in many districts, where both farmers and their workers objected strongly to being appealed for or to appealing themselves, feeling that they were shirking their duty in doing so. With the younger men especially there was, mixed with this feeling, the call of their mates already in khaki, the feeling that they were left out of it and a very natural desire to share with them the duties and dangers of serving their country in uniform. “This is one reason,” said Mr Mulholland, “why I personally feel that a proposal which enables a man to be in the Army while still being available to 1 his industry would be the only satisfactory solution so far as farming is I concerned.”'