THE ANDREW BEQUEST

Evening Star, Issue 14534, 9 December 1910, Page 4

THE ANDREW BEQUEST

• JUDGMENT RY MR JUSTICE WILLIAMS. .VOLUNTEERS' RIGHTS NOT YET .... - AFFECTED. This morning- Mr Justice Williams save judgment in the matter of the bequwst of j Samuel Henry Andrew. His Honor said : The becpjcot of the testator was to the Dunedin Volunteers, and if they were disbanded or ceased to exist n.s a regiment, then to the City of Dunedin. I agree with Mr MacGregor that if a corps ceases to be a volunteer corps—that' is. a corps nil die members of which, serve voluntarily—>uch corps has ceased to exist as a volunteer corps, tu'.d ir> no longer the subject of tho tesliiior's bounty. A body of men which consists either wholly or in part of men who aie compelled to serve in it whether ihey will or no cannot lie properly called volunteers. The mere transference, however, of a volunteer corps to tho 'Territorial Force, so long as the hitter force remains a purely volunteer force, would not cause the corps to cease to exist. That wan decided in the case of In ro Donald, Moore v. Somerset (1909,2 Ch., 410) a case which, apart from the question of compulfory service. 1 am unable satisfactorily to distinguish from the present. At-present, however, the Territorial Forco is nothing more than the old Volunteer Force under a new name. Sections 35, 41, 25, and 25 of the Defence Act, 1909, have not been brought into operation. It is tho bringing section 23 into play, that brings into tho Territorial Force tho principle of compulsory service. I can find no other section in the Act which makes service in the Territorial Force compulsory. Although by section 20 the Volunteer Force is to become the Territorial Force, yet the section provides that this is rot to affect the conditions of scrvjfbe of any person commissioned or enrolled before tho passing of the Act. Those conditions are contained in section 55 of the Defence Act, 1908, which provided that any volunteer aiter one year's service may quit the corps on giving tho commanding officer three months' notice, or, i£ ho wishes to leave the district or tho Dominion, a fortnight's notice. When, however, by the operation of section 23 the principle of ccaxTpulsory 6orvice is introduced into any of tho corps which together constitute tho body described by the testator as tho Dunedin Volunteers, that body ceaees to exist, ns a regiment of volunteers. It becomes a body partly of volunteers and partly of men serving compulsorily, and a body of that kind is not the subject of tho testator's bounty._ I think, therefore, that when section 23 is brought into operation as above file (Sty of Dunedin will become entitled to tho bequest, but that until then the rights of the volunteers to the