NO-DEFENCE FALLACIES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 149, 27 June 1930, Page 14

NO-DEFENCE FALLACIES

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—The letter appearing over the nom-de-plume "Ex-Territorial" in your issue of 23rd June is so obviously the product of an inexperienced mind that it should call for no comment; but as it is equally obvious that .."Ex-Territorial" requires his thinking to be done for him, with your permission • I will do, my best to assist him. In the first place, if "Ex-Terri-torial" has used his eyes, he must have seen on the tunics of several of the volunteer officers running the unit to which he belonged war ribbons indicating service in quite a number of different theatres of war. To say that the system_ is a farce is to accuse these men of being either fools or rogues; fools if they bolster up something which they cannot recognise as inefficient; rogues if they know it to be useless and still support it. His second complaint, that discipline is the result of compulsion, is equally fallacious. All social discipline is based on compulsion. If "Ex-Territorial" does not believe this, let him ride his motor-bike across a street intersection when the traffic officer's signal is against jim. His complaint about the undesirables with whom he has been forced to associate when in camp is, however, more serious, as it indicts not the Territorial system but the great mass of young manhood of the nation. /Territorials are merely an indiscriminate selection of young manhood; and if the proportion of undesirables is as high as "Ex-Territorial" would have us believe, so it must be in every football club, cricket club, or any equally haphazard collection of young men. If he believes this to be the case, the remedy lies not in condemnation of the Territorial system but of the moral outlook of the people as a whole. ' It is also evident that "Ex-Territorial" has not followed the correspondence columns of the, daily Press; for in the "Evening Post" alone at least three correspondents have very effectively dealt with his preposterous claim that "any soldier will say that his Territorial-training went for nothing at the outbreak of war"; and no doubt there must be several thousaud others who could do likewise. The picture he paints of the manhood of the country springing to arms after the invaders had arrived must surely have had its origin in Hollywood, for it is'only in filmland that such things are1 capable of achievement. During the early stages of the :war several -individual Belgians are reported by the Germans to have tried the unorthodox defence of; their hearths and homes,', with regrettable ; results to both themselves and their villages. "ExTerritorial" may never have heard of the Hague Convention; bujb one of the international laws —which is still in force— arising out of its deliberations provides for the instant execution of any civilian captured with arms in his hand no matter how patriotic his motives may be, in resisting invasion. As, lfiitionally, we have agreed to this, we cannot logically object to its possible application to ourselves. Again, his positive statement that New Zealand is the only country in the British Empire where a compulsory clause exists in the Defence Act is on a par with his other statements. In Aus-. tralia, the compulsory clause has been suspended, not, abolished; South Africa has a similar provision, and so has Canada. Knally, may I remind "Ex-Territorial" that the same Government which compelled him to serve eight years in the Territorial Force also compelled him ,to spend a similar period at least at school; and that it is up to him to take advantage of the facilities afforded him by the latter course to make sure of his facts about the "former before bursting into print oji the subject.—l am, etc., >. R. AY. ALEXANDER.