CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 110, 5 November 1915, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE

CONSCRIPTION THE ONLY FAIR WAY

TO THE EDITOR. _ Sir,—lt is evident to me that the Social Democrats have not grasped the right idea in connection with conscription. France has conscription, and, with a smaller population- than Britain has placed an army in the field beside which ours pales into very small significance. Could we blame the French if they were to point out the inequality, and demand that we as Britishers should do our duty to them, ourselves, and the cause we are fighting for? Mr. Massey says that lie does not believe a conscript will fight as well as a volunteer army. If he will follow out the story of the war he will see at once that that deliverance is discounted by the fact that the. French "conscript has fought nobly, devotedly, successfully. If it were not for what our Navy has done, we might well feel sorry for ourselves as compared with a conscript France. Now, let me come nearer home. Is it fair that the burden of 6ghting (and the glory and devotion of dying) should fall upon the willing and the ready, while thousands of men are permitted to dodge? I have just returned from taking part in a campaign of recruiting in Taranaki. That campaign has been successful. Taranaki stands at the head of New Zealand for recruits. Yet there are many men —some of them the sons of men who are wealthy—who still hesitate. Is it fair that these men should escape, while the sons of the workers go? I do not say that men of position and wealth have not given their sons— I know they have. But there are others

who are quite willing that .all the rest should go before their sons. Conscription hits no man unfairly. It serves all alike—rich and poor. Only fit men are compelled to go; and, though I have always hitherto resisted conscription, I have come to the conclusion that only by its means will our manhood be fairly treated. Everywhere I have been I have put the question to our men, and I am glad to be able to say that not upon one occasion did my decision in favour of conscription rouse other than loud cheers. At the Tahora Tunnel, above Whangamomona, I addressed one of the

finest gatherings of hard-working men that I have seen in all New Zealand. They were opposed to compulsion formerly, but the lessons of the present have caused them to recast their opinion. They have pronounced for conscription, and I say again that it is the only fair way.' No man who is physically unfit would be compelled to go to the war ; no only son of a widow would, have to go; one son at least would be left in each family (I know many families in New Zealand to-day who mourn the loss of all their sons in this awful war) ; no married man with a family would be forced to go till all the available single men had gone; then would come the turn of the married men without children, and ■ widowers ;. then the married men with one .child; and so on, if need were. Would not this be infinitely better than the present inequitable plan of "flogging the willing horse"? It makes one impatient to hear the wretched drivel that is talked by men who ought to know better about "militarism." We are fighting to down militarism; to

crush it out of existence, and to-make it impossible for it to ever again raise its damnable head. If Britain had but taken the advice of the late Lord Roberts; had it copied New Zealand and Australia, the war would have been over long ere this. We are paying the price of unpreparedness as an Empire. Let us see to it that we seek in fullest measure to atone for our past foolishness. If compulsion is made necessary, the question is not one of prating about militarism or anti-militarism, but whether we are prepared to exert out utmost strength to destroy ihe Potsdam ruffian and all his devilish works, or go down for ever as a race, and abandon to a materialistic demonology all the things we hold most deai, all tho things for which better men than ourselves laid down their lives in the bad old past.— I am, etc.,

J. T. M. HORNSBY. Carterton, 3rd November, 1915.