VICARIOUS PATRIOTISM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 3

VICARIOUS PATRIOTISM.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir, — Re your remarks on militia training in to-night's Post, I should' like to voice th' 3 sentiment of, I boliove, a large number of tradesmen who, like myself, have come here, bringing monry into the colony. Military training is a grand institution for all those who have anything to defend, .also for those people — officers, for instance — who get a rattling good billet out of it, also for thoso who wish to volunteer for amusement; but there is. no "business)" in it, and bocauso tho people of other countries are foolish) enough to put up with the inconvenience of it, is no reason why we should. We como hero hoping to find it, as so luridly advortibed on the other side, fairly easy to sett!.? on the land, but find it is not. £O. Now, here's the point. 2so one expects thoso who have most to defend (squatters, for. instance,/ and merchants also of portly ibuild) to be dragged up and made to do the duck's march in a, circle to qualify for hors-s artillery, though it would bo highly amusing, and give others more patriotic desire to serve if they wtre. But we shall be expected to go through with, it, while, ;you see, we barely make a comfortable living. And once war is come our living js stopped. We havo nothing to defend; th«re is plenty of room elsewhere* where our trades are a deal betteT than fighting. Why, then, should wo stop to dofend other people's property? It may be' patriotic, but it doesn't pay. !Now, if you look closely into it, old William the Conqueror had a. good insight of politics, and a better idea, of justice than this latsr one. Mark, it isn't a- question of how they became possessed of it at all ; but, being possessed of property, the Burden of the defence should fall on tho^e who ha\6 it to defend. Let every dog giowl accoTding to the size of His bone, ho prepared to set up his back hair in proportion. Mid likewise be prepared to do battle in tho interests theicof. If we were in Canada wo should have 160 acrcp of our own to stop and fight for, and my suggestion to the Government is that if they want us to stop and fight they should give us a life lcaso of an amount of land we can live on in return for military service, and aho make the squatters and merchants fteht themselves, a* well as pay in proportion to tho property to be defended. There's more than appears on the surface in tho feudal system. — I am, etc., SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. Wellington, 25th September.