ATTENDANCE AT TRAINING CAMPS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 32, 15 October 1912, Page 2

ATTENDANCE AT TRAINING CAMPS

IMPORTANT DECISION INFORMATION AGAINST EXVOLUNTEER DISMISSED. An important reserved decision touching the liability to attend camp under the Defence Act (Part VI.), was de-. livered by Mr. W. G. Riddell, S.M., today. Defendant in the case was Robert, Hogg, and he was charged that on 6th April, 1912, he absented himself without lawful excuse from canip at Trentham. His Worship pointed out in the judgment that . defendant admitted his absence from the encampment, but said that a Territorial under Part HI. of the Act he was not liable to a penalty under section 51. Defendant was a Volunteer when the Defence Act of 1909 came into operation, and under section 20 of that 'Act he -automatically became a Territorial without passing into the general training section mentioned in Part VL of the Act. Section 51 enacts (inter alia) that every person who, without lawful excuse, evades or fails to render the personal service required of him under Part VI. of the Act is liable to a penalty. Part VI. does not seem to include, said his Worship, or apply to those Territorials who were originally Volunteers, as section 33, subsection (c)' (amended by the Act of 1910), refers to the liability of persons between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nve years of age to be trained in the general training section or the Territorial Force in the case of their transfer to that force. By section 23 provision 4 s made for the transfer from +he general training section to the Territorial Force. Defendant never was in the general training section nor had he . been transferred from it to the Territorial Force, and so it is doubtful whether he comes clearly, within the provisions of section 51.' The information was therefore dismissed. Mr. P. J. O'Regan appeared for Hogg.