Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1942. WAR AND PEACE TRAINING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 November 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1942. WAR AND PEACE TRAINING.

aspects of manpower organisation are at present claiming serious attention. Perhaps the most important of all is one of those dealt with at the conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce in Wanganui last week. The conference passed a resolution in which it declared itself seriously concerned with the problem arising from the recruitment of youths for the armed forces and the loss of training and education they must suffer, pointed out that after the last war young men whose service had prevented their being trained or learning to work constituted a serious and special unemployment problem, and suggested that as soon, and as far as circumstances will permit the Government should adopt such measures as will permit selected youths to continue their civilian training, without interfering with their military training obligations. Anyone who has made himself acquainted with the facts and has given thought to them must be aware that the problem regarding which the Associated Chambers of Commerce expressed concern is of the gravest moment. Lads of eighteen are being drafted into camp for continuous military training, although, as the law stands, they are not liable for overseas service until they have attained the age of 21 years. They arc immediately available as members of a fighting force only if the Dominion should be invaded. No question is raised regarding the necessity of military training and no exception is taken to this training starting at the age of eighteen. What is objected to, and that very reasonably, is that lads should be required to spend all their time in military camps from the age of eighteen onwards. This plainly invites the serious consequences indicated by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and it is doubtful at least whether the policy involved can on any grounds be defended.

The two or three years from the age of eighteen onward are an all-important part of the period in which most lads prepare themselves, in studies, industrial apprenticeship or some other way to take an active and purposeful part in. the life of the community. In these few years of transition from boyhood to manhood the whole future of many individuals is made or marred. Alilitary training in these days of great emergency is essential, but equally in the national interest and in that of individuals it should be laid down that military training must, be allowed to take up no more of the time of our youthful manhood, and to interfere no more with their education or training, than is really necessary.

When this question was discussed recently by the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of that organisation, Mr C. 8. Hammond, said a representative of the Army “had described a proposal to give men of 18 to 20 a short period of intensive training and then release them for the rest of the year as not feasible.” This representative of the Army, or those for whom he spoke most certainly should be required to establish their ease if that can be done. There is much to suggest, that, it cannot. The question involved is not one with which the Army, as such, is competent to deal or should be permitted to deal. It is a broad question of national policy, vitally affecting the future of individuals and the State.

Evidence is available that many lads, doing readily and loyally all that is asked of them, are wasting much of their time in camp and that the experience is unsettling and demoralising, not necessarily in any vicious sense but as involving a deadening and damping down of youthful energy and enthusiasm at a time when it ought to be finding unhampered expression in enterprising preparation for active and working life. The conditions in which youths from eighteen onward should be allowed to divide their time between military training and study, training or other preparation for civil life may be open to consideration, but a plan on these lines ought to be worked out at. once. The alternative is to acquiesce in a continued and wholesale waste and crippling of the most, valuable national asset of the Dominion—its oncoming youth.

The proposal of the Associated Chambers of Commerce that selected youths should be allowed to continue their civilian' training, without interfering with their military training obligations, does not go far enough. What is needed is that all youths for whom useful civilian training is or can be made available should be allowed to divide their time between that training and the military training which, of course, must not be neglected or hampered.