DEFENCE PROBLEMS

Evening Star, Issue 14184, 8 October 1909, Page 7

DEFENCE PROBLEMS

Lieutenant-colonel Chaytor, who has been ’engaged in military studies in England for between two and three years, returned to New Zealand on Monday by the Tainui. He was the first of the New Zealand officers to tak6 the Imperial course. Lieuten-ant-colonel Chaytor told a ‘ Post ’ reporter that the Imperial Government are eager to extend this system, which enables officers from the colonies to qualify highly in the arts of war. Speaking about the Territorials, Colonel Chaytor said that they were no bettor and no worse than volunteers, except that they had better organisation. They lacked training sufficient to make them first-class soldiers, but Mr Haldane, Secretary for War, was determined to make a success of his scheme as a scheme. The officer returned with a strong belief in tbc necessity of compulsory military service. Strong men were working at this ideal in the Old Country, he remarked, and the feeling in favor'of it was growing. He mentioned, as merely an example, one public meeting at which the whole audience—a very mixed one—voted in favor of conscription, after tho system had been explained. " Conscription is a bogey word,” he added, but he S emphasised this opinion: that people in reat Britain were beginning to realise at it was not wise to depend too much upon the voluntary principle. Politicians were against compulsion, because they thought that public opinion was against it. I'hc difficulty in promoting the compulsion movement in England lay in the fact that the country had not been invaded for centuries, "in France and Germany, where invasions were remembered well, the people considered that no sacrifice was too great, provided they could make themselves fit to meet their enemies. In manufacturing England it was being recognised that compulsory military training , appreciably improve tlio standard of the manhood, apart altogether from tho aspect of defence. In Germany it was an adage that three years taken from a man’s life for martial exercises meant the uddition ot* six ;\t the other end. and all the rears following the training were healthier for the individual tnan they would otherwise have been.