HARDENING SOLDIERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 151, 27 June 1940, Page 23

HARDENING SOLDIERS.

GERMAN TRAINING METHODS,

LONDON, June 13.

"Men! Men! Men! The cry is the same as in 191S, when we threw middleaged conscripts with less than six weeks' training into the battle to prevent Germany marching . to victory" (writes the' "Daily Mail" military correspondent, Lieut.-Colonel Lowe). "But to-day we have a vast number of young men, medically passed months ago, whoso training should begin immediately.

"While" tho summer lasts, there are endlees opportunities of hardening them as the Germans hardened the Hitler youth. From bitter experience, we now know that this process was a good one. Before the war everything was done to harden the German soldier through rigorous training, which often kept recruits 48 hours without food, and devised dangerous jobs in order to remove fear.

"We do not require tests of courage; also we do not consider that deprivation of fowl necessarily hardens men. But our surplus youth should sleep in camouflaged bivouac tents and march daily until 35 miles routc-marchins is a pleasure, rather than an agony. The men should be given physical training until their units are ready to absorb them."

"Tho Times," in a leading article discussing Germany's losees in tanks, says: "Fanaticism and iron discipline combined make formidable goads, and the German forces were trained to fight on without food for astonishingly long periods."