THE SOLDIER'S LIFE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLIII, Issue 13, 15 August 1916, Page 5

THE SOLDIER'S LIFE.

There are arguments both for and against conscription, but just now the former are infinitely stronger than the litter. If anything more is necessary to stir the shirkers into a sense of their responsibilities surely the message from the Chairman of the Recruiting Board (Bight Hon. W. F. Massey) which was published a few days ago should have the desired effect. The Prime Minister lias made it perfectly clear that men eligible for service under the first division will be asked shortly, if in the meantime they do not > come forward voluntarily, to "please explain" their reason for their apparent lack of patriotism. lu all the controversy which has raged over the question of compulsion one aspect has largely escaped attention, and that is the effect of conscription upon the conscripts themselves. Assuming as we are justified in doing that the training they would undergo would be the same as that which has already made soldiers of some 60,000 of our young manhood', it seems indisputable that the result would be wholly beneficial. The difference in the appearance in the recruit after serving a few months in a training camp is most marked. He has grown broad-chested, Ws shoulders are straight as nature meant them to be, he is bigger, heavier and carries himself more erect; he is harder and stronger, and in every way a better specimen of manhood than when he first went into camp. This change is largely attributable to the virtues of the "simple life." Every | reeruit who has spent a few months in the training camp is a living proof of this, ami also affords incontestable evidence that our ordinary mode of life is wrong. The Christchurch Evening News in an article bearing on this subject says that man is so adaptable that can accommodate himself to almost any condition of existence, but that does lot alter the fact that the simple life — plenty of exercise, plenty of food, plenty of sleep and plenty of fresh air—is the only way of health. As one recruit, Writing from Trent ham, said, "This is toe Lite! 1 wouldn't be back in the offiee for anything that they could offer I never knew before what it was to be alive every minute of the day!" These hundreds of young fellows, brimmjng over with vigorous health, gay *ith the light-hearted cheerfulness that comes from feeling perfectly "fit," are so many indications of what the manhood of this country, and of any other country tor that matter, might be if every one of them were compelled to spend six months—say, between his 19th and 20th years—doing much the same *ork under the same conditions as do tie members of the reinforcements at toe training camps. Of course that *oul.} be a modified form of conscription, and equally, of course, the idea that such a state of things could come to pass is onlj- an idle dream. But the dream of one generation sometimes tomes to be the concrete fact of the

®eit. The dreamers, scorned though they have often been by their contemporaries, have not seldon} proved to °* y e been the pioneers of new condi0Dj > which later on were accepted as •aong the eommon-plaees of life. And *°' wting these fine young fellbws— Woe of the best manhood) in the Em-

: • lßr ®^ ore ) i* l the world— I ffeUiig :«hMt: #or. itreeUi one likes

to dream of a day when every young New Zealander will have the opportunity that they have had to acquire a stock of strength and vigour that shall stand them in' good stead for the rest of their lives.