RECRUITS AND EYESIGHT.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15289, 27 May 1915, Page 8

RECRUITS AND EYESIGHT.

Mr A. N. Field, a member of the literary staff of the "Dominion," writes to that paper an indignant protest against his rejection a s '-unfit" for the Expeditionary Force through defective eyesight. He says his eyesight, with glasses, is normal, that he can shoot as accurately as many men who havo been accepted, and that as for seeing at night, he has driven a motor-car in the dark through the Buller Gorge and over the Rimutakas. He adds: —"The man with false teeth, who cannot masticate his food without artificial aid, is accepted as a matter of course. It is just as easy for him to lose his teeth as it is for mc to lose my spectacles, and once he had lost them he would be quite as ineffective as I should bo without glasses. The toothless man can not conveniently cany with him spar© set s of false teeth for emergencies, but it is the easiest thing in the world to carry a couple of extra pairs of spectacles in one's pockets. The Defence Regulations do not take account of these plain and obvious facts." i