Home Guard Parade

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23809, 1 December 1942, Page 4

Home Guard Parade

A recent leading article, criticising the proposal to hold a mass parade of six Home Guard battalions on Sunday next, has excited considerable comment, some unfavourable but mostly favourable, if correspondents’ letters ma;, be accepted as a guide. The most interesting of these letters was from a Springston correspondent, who directed attention to a parade of Home Guard units to be held on Banks Peninsula on the same day. This parade will take the form of competitions among sections of the various units, such as shooting, bomb-throwing, section in attack, tactical exercises, and so forth. The parade of the Christchurch battalions will be a semi-ceremonial parade, accompanied by brass bands. Those interested may judge which parade they consider the more valuable in present circumstances. Last Sunday at least one Christchurch battalion spent practically a whole-day parade rehearsing for next Sunday. Undoubtedly, if smartness on parade is the objective of the Home Guard, the time was not ill-spent, and the work done will be reflected on the parade ground. But the cjuestion to be asked is of what value is this or any similar parade as training for fighting the enemy. Measured by that standard, it is suggested, the mass parade has little to commend and much to condemn it. For mass movements in the conditions of modeni warfare are an invitation to mass bombing and mass shelling. Moreover, the smart movements that men are encouraged to perform at ceremonial parades—swinging of arms, marching erect, and mapping to attention —are the very antithesis of their movements in actual battle, when they are en-

the national executive of the National Par! v. Mr Lyons is Deputy-Mayor of Christchurch'and has been a member of the City Council continuously for 16 years. In 1025 he contested the Lyttelton seat and was declared returned as the member, but the declaration was upset by the electoral court on the petition of the late Mr J. McCombs, who had held the seat. In 1934 he contested the Lvttelton seal again at the byelection following the death of Mrs E. R. McCombs, and in 19,'19, the Christchurch South seat, made vacant by the death of Mr E. J. Howard. In these contests Mr Lyons reduced the vote of the Labour candidates. Mr Lyons, who served overseas in the Groat War, was engaged in journalism in Christchurch before he became secretary of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association.