SERVING TWICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1940, Page 6

SERVING TWICE

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —When will conscription come? We married women with children, are we to see our husbands in khaki while young single men line the pavejments to see them march away? Are we mothers to be left straining to 'make ends meet while these gay 1 young bachelors continue on their I happy, well-salaried way? We do not j wish to force all the responsibility on the single men. I, for one (and there are numbers of other -women who are of the same opinion) will never stand in my husband's way when it is his turn to join the Army, but not,while healthy single lads hold back. We are fighting for justice, aren't we? Well, let us begin at home. In the last war my husband was on the French front in the R.A.F. at the age of 17 years, and is eager to go again now. Can anyone tell me why he, and the hundredr of others-like him, should fight twice to shelter those who can, but won't, go once—"not until I'm fetched," as I heard one New Zealand youth remark. After all, what is good enough for England should be good enough for New Zealand; besides, if England goes down, where does New Zealand go? Also, let those men who have been rejected as unfit be given some distinguishing badge, if only for their own self-respect. The argument of the volunteer's morale versus the morale of the conscript seems to me a poor one. The French Army is considered one of the finest in the world, yet the ranks are conscripts to a man.—l am, etc.,

SEMPER FIDELIS