Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1817, THE MILITARY AGE

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 38, 14 August 1917, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1817, THE MILITARY AGE

TE« manner in which the proposal to. lower the minimum age for military service to nineteen years has been received is a credit to tie(country. The young men who would be thus brought in are without votes, and will not get them for two years to come. Both for this reason, and because they have no dependents, they represent the safest and cheapest material for the timid or penuripu3 politician to exercise his patriotism upon. Upon another and larger class, and one much more deserving of consideration, the proposal mightr have been expected to exercise a.powerfnl, attraction.. In the course of the next few months the limits of the First Division ■will have bean reached, and the call will have to .be extended to the married men. The prospect is an unpleasant one, but the country is prepared to face' :it with the same quiet and businesslike resolution which it had previously "brought to the qrigina.l change from ■■.volunteering to compulsion. There had vbeon no wavering or indecision until in -an evil hour Minislere, whose absence had relieved them from responsibility for the administration of the compulsory eys;lom, »n4 who -apjiMjajjfe. fcfttliiei be%

able to learn the sense of the country or even of their colleagues on the subject, ventured to hint that we were sending too many men. The suggestion might have had disastrous' results if the mind of the country had not been so firmly set upon the discharge of its duty. A few weak-kneed politicians took the hint, and even endeavoured to improve ; upon it, but the determination of the country was unshaken. Above all, the men of the Second Division, in whose interests the movement was designed, stood firm. They had no desire to shirk their duty, and now, in the presence of another similar movement, they are still more emphatic in repudiating the tempting opportunity provided for evasion.

From all parts of the country resolutions and expressions of individual opinion have come in protest against the proposed lowering of the ago, but the most conspicuous arid most honourable of all have been the protests of the Second Division Leagues. At the meeting of the central. organisation held in Wellington yesterday, it was reported that the replies of the various leagues to a circular inviting their opinions on the proposal were strongly and unanimously hostile, and the hope was expressed that "no reasonable member of the community would for one moment harbour the thought that the Second Division men would shelter themselves behind the youths of the country." Though some people are of opinion that we should slacken in our efforts and allow Prance and the United States and our kinsmen in the Mother Country .to'do our fighting for us, the men of the Second Division repudiate with scorn the ignoble logic of this vicarious patriotism. They did not ask a month ago that t&* married men of America and France should relieve them of their responsibilities, and they now pour indignation and contempt upon the suggestion that they should accept the same dishonourable service from the boys of their own country.

I' We are of course aware that military opinion may be cited in favour of the reduction of the age-limit. On the Continent of Europe in the days before the war the liability for service began in all cases, we believe, at twenty years. "If this limit has been lowered under the stress of war, we must remember that the same necessity has at the same time sent greybeards into the firing-line, and that the conscription of boys has never "been based upon the need for exempting married men. In Great Britain the limit of eighteen years is carried on from the days of voluntaryism, but there, again, the idea of exempting married men has "been long since abandoned, and Britain's proximity to the main battlefields, and her liability to invasion, give opportunities for home service to which the circumstances of New Zealand present no analogy. In Canada recruits have been accepted at nineteen, and in. Australia at eighteen, but it is noteworthy that for the purposes of conscription Canada has, raised the age to twenty, and Australia may be expected to follow this lead if she ever reverses her "No" vote. To lower the present age-limit in New Zealand by, say, six months for volunteers seems to us the utmost that is worth •considering under present conditions. Such a change would extend the brief period of grace at present allowed to ■every young man as he reaches the agelimit, and would not pttt anybody into the firing-line till he had passed the age of twenty. But public opinion will surely not tolerate anything more than this, nor do we think that it ought to do so.' It is justly suspicious just now of anything that seems to suit the necessi; ties of people with "cold feet," even though military authority may also bo adduced in its support.