The Call for Men.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15453, 4 December 1915, Page 10

The Call for Men.

In returning to the question of recruiting in this district, the last thing we should think of doing would bo to make excuses lor appearing importunate. The need for recruits is urgent, and as time passes, if the existing methods are maintained without change, the work of getting men will grow increasingly difficult, and may in the end come to the point of failure. In a comprehensive article which wc print in another part of to-day's paper there will bo found an account of some of the difficulties that beset tho business of obtaining men in sufficient numbers. together with some opiuions as to the direction in which a change should be made. There is growing up a very strong feeling against those men, of whatever class, who ought to enlist, but will not. We see this feeling showing itself in tho attitude of local bodies in different parts of the Dominion towards their employees, in the movement amongst cricketers to affirm that a man who shu-ks his duty to his country and to his fellows in

Gallipoli is unfit for admission into a cricket team, and in a growinc belief amongst business men that single men of military age, lit anrl without dependents, ought not to bo kept in their positions. There arc only two or three points which wo desire to discuss today. The first is the fact that if tho voluntary system fails conscription must be introduced. Wo ourselves hold that compulsory .service is the only thoroughly just system, but we arc determined, like many others of the same way of thinking, to do what is 'possible to make voluntaryism a success. What are the people doing who arc opposed to compulsory service on every ground? We have Labour organisations in various places denouncing conscription in violent terms, but they are not lifting a finger to assist voluntaryism, although they, above all, ought to do so if they are, as they would wish us to think them, honest and patriotic. If tho voluntary system is to succeed, everyone must help. "To

mako a voluntary system a success at "such .1 crisis as this,"' Lord Derby recently wroto "really means that every ''man who would in n conscript country be taken compulsorily should offer •'his services voluntarily; and to those " who have hitherto hung back from " enlistment, giving to themselves rea- •' sons for not so doing, I would urge '.'.that they should ask themselves the "following question:—'ls tho excuse " that I give to myself for not joining ''0110 which would bo held to bo effec- '• tivo in a conscript country?' Let " them give themselves an honest an- " swer and act accordingly.'' In tho meantime the Government ought to take an active part in tho work of scientific recruiting without any delay. We by no moans consider that the question of local camps is ended, although, as wo have said before, if we can get tho men without establishing local camps, local camps will not bo aske4 for. Mr L. 31. Isitt writes to us on this subject to-day. Ho upbraids the employers recently addressed by Col. Allen for abandoning their demand for a local camp, arguing that Col. Allen gavo no new or sufficient reason why local camps should not bo estabished. Wo admit the force of most of what Mr Isitt says; with much of it we are most heartily in agrcoment. It was unnecessary for Mr Isitt to assure us that he is making no party attack on Col. Allen; the good faith of his letter is apparent, and he pays a generous but well-deserved tribute to the devotion and industry of the Minister of Defence, whom it is still tho fashion with some unenlightened politicians and journalists to attack with a bitterness half comical and wholly improper.