AUSTRALIA'S EFFORT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 169, 17 July 1916, Page 4

AUSTRALIA'S EFFORT.

In Australia the movement in favour of compulsion is growing. The state of recruiting is not satisfactory. The Government will not give details, so it ie apparently not known exactly how many men have enlisted or have been sent away, or what are the Government's commitments. It has been announced in both Queensland and Victoria thai the required number of recruits cannot be obtained. The chairman of the Victorian Parliamentary Recruiting Committee stated recently that the voluntary system ■was " worked out," and that the committee was consequently reducing its etaff of recruiters. ■ For many weeks past it has only been too obvious that voluntaryism is a spent force," says the "Age." "Indeed, we must hark back months among the records of enlistment to discover a single day which produced a sufficient number of recruits to satisfy our military needs. And this is not merely true of Victoria; it applies equally to every other State in the Commonwealth. The system, in short, has universally broken down." There are, says the "Age," 120,000 young, fit unmarried men in Australia, who have refused to serve their country in any circumstances. Now Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, speaking on May 6th at his birthplace in Wales, said: "For those who are holding aloof and neglecting their duty there will be a hell infinitely more poignant and overwhelming than any hell of punishment yet sullered by men or women in Britain —a hell too bitter for imagination to picture." Apparently there will be plenty of Australians in this place of torment. The Government's attitude towards the whole question is open to grave suspicion when one finds the Assistant-Minister for Defence saying that "Australia has done not only her share, but more than her share." There should be no question of "share" about any Dominion's part in the war. It is our war as much as Britain's. To cay that Australia has done more than her share when it is known that there are many thousands of shirkers in Australia, and when ser vice is compulsory in Britain, is wrong to the verge of disloyalty. Unfortunately political considerations appear to govern or affect the situation. It is said that there is a majority in the House of Representatives in favour of conscription, but that the Government ib deterred by the supposed hostility of Labour in general. The Political Labour League in New South Wales went so far as to decide to reject the nominatioi of any candidate not prepared to oppose compulsory service. The pledge of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, given early in the war, to devote the last man and the last shilling to the war, seems to have faded into the background.