FRIENDS OBJECT TO MILITARY TRAINING

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 79, 3 April 1914, Page 7

FRIENDS OBJECT TO MILITARY TRAINING

DEPUTATION TO AUSTRALIA'S GOVERNOR-GENERAL RETURN TO VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE URGED. (By Telegraph.— Press Association,— Copyright.) (Received April 3, 8.30 a.m.) LONDON, 2nd April. A deputation from the Society of Friends, headed by Sir John Barlow, had a private interview a\ ith and urged on Sir Ronald Munro-Fei'guson, the new Governor-General of the Commonwealth, to support the return to the principle of voluntary military training in Australia. The deputation quoted Lord Denman's (the retiring Governor-General) recent remark in Australia that, supposing universal training became unpopular, the law would be very difficult to administer. The deputation contended that the conditions referred to by Lord Denman were already in existence, and .quoted statistics of prosecutions. [In the military world, the MunroFerguson family for generations past has been distinguished. General Sir Ronald Crauford Ferguson, described as "a young Scotchman of singular bodily strength and activity," performed brilliantly in the great war with France, 1793, and later in India, and in the recapture of the Cape of Good Hope. Later, in 1808. for his services at the battle of Vimeira, under the Duke of Wellington, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, he showed such bravery that he was thanked in his place in the House of Commons for his services. As in the xase of his father, Colonel Robert Munro-Fergusop, the Governor-General designate manifested an early love for the army, and when he was only fifteen years of age he joined the File Light Horse- The War authorities raised objection on the score of age, but his commanding officer represented that he was "a young man greatly beyond his years in capacity and bodily strength." On that he was allowed to remain in the regiment, and he subsequently obtained the captaincy of a company. He attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, passed his first competitive examination for the army in 1879, and in that year joined the Grenadier Guards.]