RETURN TO CIVIL LIFE

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23800, 20 November 1942, Page 3

RETURN TO CIVIL LIFE

SOLDIERS UNDER 21 PROPOSAL SUPPORTED BY EDUCATION BOARD (P.S.S.) DUNEDIN, November 19. The Otago Education Board is in full agreement with the proposal made by the president of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Association (Mr C. V. Smith, of Dunedin) in his address to the annual conference of the association in Christchurch recently that youths under 21 who are in camp should be returned to civil life for a large part of the year. The board, in a letter to Mr Smith, said that it had put forward what it considered reasonable proposals in regard to training college’students, suggesting that after, say, four months’ preliminary training they be released and be attached to the local fortress area, where they would be immediately available for an emergency. “We would now suggest.” the letter continued, “that all organisations representing employers of boys under 21 years of age and of students studying full time for professions should form a deputation to wait on the War Cabinet. Unless those interested make some concrete move like this nothing will be done. “It is possible that the military may be hiding behind the Army education scheme which is being organised. This scheme, however, is not going to help many classes of apprentices, training college students, and other students who require university classes.”