HOME GUARD AND E.P.S.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 101, 1 May 1941, Page 11

HOME GUARD AND E.P.S.

NEED OF THE TIMES

VOLUNTEER SYSTEM

WRONG

Power had already been taken

to draft recruits into the Home ( Guard and E.P.S. by means oi? a ! compulsory system, said the Hon. W. Perry, M.L.C., president of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association, addressing a meeting of the police section of the E.P.S. at the Central Police Station last night. ,

"The position may well arise that you will pass from being a voluntary organisation to an organisation into which a certain number of men who for various reasons have not yet joined this organisation will be drafted," he said. "There is no doubt about it that the only way in which this war can be won is by the mobilisation of all the resources, financial, civil, and military, of this country, and of the other countries* of the British Empire. ,

"I know that steps are already being taken to draSfc into the Home Guard, into this organisation, and other organisations of a similar nature men who for various reasons have been turned down or rejected for'service in the armed forces. There are, of course, certain key men who are, perhaps, as keen as anybody to do their bit with the armed forces, and there are men who for the time being may be physically not quite up .to the military standard and are not able, therefore, to take their part in the Territorial force or the forces overseas. These men will be drafted compulsorily, if necessary, into the Home Guard and other organisations." GIGANTIC EFFORT, It has been said, said Mr. Perry, and it could not be too often reI peated, that to win the war the BritI ish Empire must make an effort i greater than any effort that any ' nation had ever made, and greater perhaps than the sum of all the struggles of all the nations of the world. • They would realise the gigantic effort that must be forthcoming if they were to survive instead of being condemned to a lifetime of serfdom and slavery. "The voluntary system," said Mr. Perry, "is based upon a fundamentally wrong principle—the principle that contends it is. the duty of the man who obeys the calls of duty to protect the home, the family, and the skin of the man who does not. That is the sense of duty that you men < who are here tonight have got. If you can't do the job, other men must be compelled to help you to do it."

effort