MILITARY DEFAULTERS

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 138, 7 December 1918, Page 7

MILITARY DEFAULTERS

OVER 10,000 TO DATE,

In view of the present position of the war it is interesting to note the present position of those reservists, drawn in successive ballots under the Military Service Act, who for various Teasons could not be found, and therefore succeeded in evading service. The cunning and ingenuity employed by military shirkers to avoid their responsibilities as citizens is stated to be simply amazing and shameless, and it is understood that the Defence Department will, not even though the war be oVer, allow the military evader and shirker to go scot free. What treatment will be accorded these men must, of course, be decided'by the Government as a matter of . general policy, and will no doufct be announced in due course. In the meantime, however, the following particulars of military defaulters will be read with interest by the general public. From August, 1916, when the Military service Act was placed^upon the Statute Book, to 31st October last, 134,739 men were drawn in the ballots. Of this number 10,545 were passed to the Director of Personal Services as defaulters. Of these defaulters no fewer than 8498 were secured, 683 were still under investigation, and 1364 were subjects of warrants in the.hands of the police.