ONE CLEAR DUTY

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 115, 10 February 1944, Page 4

ONE CLEAR DUTY

Soldiers Home On Leave OUTSPOKEN BRIGADIER

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, February 9.

In an interview here, Brigadier Inglis, who is on furlough, spoke forthrightly on certain aspects of the Dominion war effort. “The most dangerous moral cancer of all,” lie said, “is the one engendered by those who say to dtliens, ‘Yon have done your bit; now it is up to someone else to take your place.’ “Whan that sort of thing is constantly said to soldiers home on leave it is only too likely to undermine their will to fight, specially when they see other men apparently fit. ensconced in safe and profitable jobs at home,” he said., It was a false doctrine in these times. Every num had one clear duty, to lend a hand wherever that, hand could most benefit his country. In a total war no one had the right to measure his own effort by that of the most shameless shirker. If lie bad no one would ever do anything. Speaking of the furlough scheme Brigadier Inglis said it. would not have been possible except for the interval for training between Tunis and Italy. Parting with a large proportion of battle-experi-enced men from any formation meant a loss of extra lives in the next campaign. A small percentage of reinforcements could be absorbed without much harm because they were carried along by the experienced majority, but when whole subunits consisted of men who did not know, then many men were unnecessarily killed and wounded. “That is why you notice so many recent reinforcements in the casualty lists whenever new men have been posted in large numbers,” Brigadier Inglis added. “That is why on these occasions the proportion of officer and n.c.o. casualties rises so steeply. They have to do much more than they ought because others do not know their jobs. People ought to know that- There are times when to clamour for the return of one of their own folk means the loss of two of someone else’s.”