STUDENT SOLDIERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 76, 26 September 1942, Page 6

STUDENT SOLDIERS

To reconcile military service with the continuance of a civil calling or career is obviously difficult, or, rather, impossible, except in the case of the Home Guard, but it is gratifying to note that the authorities are endeavouring to do something for the student soldier in his preparation for examinations which are a passport to the professions. The next three months may be called the examination season in New Zealand, and, normally, hundreds of young people would be studying for university examinations of various kinds held in November and December. To the youth who, at the age of 18, automatically becomes liable for military service it would be a great hardship if he were not allowed to sit for his matriculation examination in December. It might mean a postponement for years —perhaps for ever. The announcement, therefore, by the Minister of National Service (Mr. Broadfoot) that appeal boards have been recommended to grant postponement of mobilisation to enable students to sit for the examination will be welcome news to many. To the older youths already in Territorial camps leave may, on application, be granted ■ also to sit, and, to some extent, prepare, for university examinations. These concessions, though made late in the day, for the young men already mobilised, are welcome as a token of official realisation that an effort should be made to lessen the interruption caused by military needs to the preparation for civil careers. In the interval between 18 and 21, when the student qualifies for overseas service, much may be achieved by persevering industry, with the increased help now being made available for the encouragement of education in the Army. Much, of course, remains to be done in this respect, but the military authorities are now recognising all over the Empire, particularly in Britain itself, that a soldier, with advantage to the Army as a whole and without loss of individual military efficiency—indeed, with a gain therein—may be kept in touch with intellectual developments of all kinds, becoming thereby a better soldier as well as a better

citizen,