MEN FOR HOME GUARD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 22, 27 January 1942, Page 4

MEN FOR HOME GUARD

With the mobilisation of Territorials and the National Military Reserve, and the call-up of married men for home defence, little has been heard lately of the work of the Home Guard. Probably few of the general public know what the Guard has been doing. But the Minister of Defence disclosed at Christchurch that a certain amount of patrol work was already being done at weekends and in Wellington members of the Home Guard had been attached to fortress troops for this duty. As publicity cannot be given to details of defence preparations, it is probable that little more can be said than that the Home Guard has a job and is doing it, and may have a bigger job. This, however, raises the question of the strength of the Guard. It will lose many members through the call-up of married men. An assurance has been given that it will not suffer further losses through compulsory I E.P.S. and fire-watching services. But is that enough? There will be gaps in its ranks and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to fill them, if all able-bodied men are assigned to E.P.S. duty. Some anxiety is being expressed on this score by those who have worked hard to make the Home Guard strong and efficient. They think that there will be among the men newly enrolled for emergency duty some at least capable of doing a harder job than they will have allotted to them, and that their atteii' tion should be directed to this job. The subject is one that might well be considered by the respective authorities. The aim is not to introduce competition for men, but to assure by cooperation of authorities that every man is doing the work of which he is most capable.