MILITARY TRAINING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 51, 2 March 1909, Page 6

MILITARY TRAINING.

» . A timely and authoritative word on the subject of military training was addressed -by Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell to the men of the No. 3 Company of the Wellington Garrison Artillery, as reported in another column of to-day's issue. As a volunteer of twenty-two years' standing who has not yet applied for his discharge, Colonel Campbell's advocacy of this vital question is not open to either of the objections which are brought from opposite directions against the professional soldier and the layman employing fcimilar aiguments. The professional is, of course, attacked as a -monster prepared to sacrifice all that is best and brightest in citizenship on the altar of "militarism," and to flout the free and cheerful patriotism which inspires the volunteer movement. The layman, on the other hand, who is not a volunteer, is open to easy attack as knowing nothing about the subject, and as actuated equally with the professional soldier by a contempt for the citizen-soldior. It is indeed so difficult for anybody who is not a volunteer to speak the truth about the weakness of our present defence system without seeming to disparage the enthusiasm and selfsacrifice of those who form the greater part of th© forces, that Colonel Camp- '

bell's outspoken utterance is something to be specially thankful for It is really no disparagement to the volunteers to say fhafc there are not enough of them because the public spirit of the rest of the community does not make an equally satisfactory response. 'Such, a line of argument is not disparaging, but complimentary, to the volunteers. Nevertheless, an opposite impression is sometimes •conveyed or inferred, but no misunderstanding is possible when, as in tho present case, the appeal is from an enthusiastic volunteer who realises that tho work to which he has devoted so many years is failing for lack of sufficient support, and that the voluntary principle alone will nover give us the defence fore© thivt we need. But it is not merely as a veteran volunteer that Colonel Campbell occupies a different position from that of the oi dinar y advocates of a forward move in defence policy. He refrains from the usual complaint about the official neglect which has joined with popular indifference in starving the volunteer movement. On the contrary, ho gratefully recognises "a wonderful change in the position of the volunteers" since he enlisted twenty-two years ago. He attributes the change for the most part to the South African war, which had secured a recognition for the previously despised volunteer as "an important unit in the Army of the Empire." Colonel Campbell expressly dissociated himself from the practice of finding fault with the military authorities for the defects of the present, system, and declared that duiing his long experience ho "had always found the Defence Office sympathetic." This unusual tenderness for the local War Office only adds weight to Colonel Campbell's plea for a radical change of policy. He spoke of the general opinion of volunteer officers and men that "the responsibilities of defence should not be thrown upon the shoulders of a few, but upon the youth of the Dominion generally." The principle of Mr. Deakin's Defence Bill was that "the defence of one' 3 country should be the business of every ablebodied man, not only of a few enthusiasts." Such a scheme of universal military training would involve no appreciable disturbance of business, no barrack life, no "militarism," nothing, in fact, that we ordinarily associate with conscription beyond the provision of the effective material for a large citizen army in time of need. No higher standard of efficiency would be needed than that at present attained by the volunteers, and no greater sacrifice of time than that which they freely make. It is their misfortune and not their fault that they are too few, but it will be both the fault and the misfortune of the country if it does not take the only practicable course for multiplying their numbers, and so providing a really efficient force.