COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING.

Evening Star, Issue 14554, 1 May 1911, Page 7

COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir, —I would like to ask you through your columns what is the number of years the male inhabitants of New Zealand 'have to serve under the new Defence Act? I have studied the Acts of 1908, 1909, and 1910, and, so far as I can make out, a term of sixteen years' compulsory training has to be served—namely, from fourteen to twenty-five in the active army and fron. twenty-five to thirty in the reserve. I am a warm supporter of compulsory military training in moderation, but if my reading of the Act is correct 1 have no hesitation in saying that hj will not only alienate support and sympathy but generate opposition. Such legislation is either crass stupidity on the part of Parliament or done on purpose to ruin the scheme. A fairer method would have been to compel all males between the ages of fifteen and

twenty-five to servo four or five years in the active list and three years in the reserve. Sixteon years' military training is enough to kill all enthusiasm. If a Britisher can't learn how to shoot, drill, and fight in three years he had better go under.—l am, etc., Faib Plat. April 29. [The nature of the service as provided by the Act is as, follows:—Prom the age of twelve to the age of fourteen a boy will be a junior cadet, and will perform a of elementary military training, chiefly physical, under the direction of the Education Department. On reaching the ago of fourteen, or on leaving a primary school, the boy .will be transferred to the senior cadets, and will then become a'member of the military forces, though .not liable to be called out to fight. ■ He wJll remain a senior cadet till ho is eighteen. On reaching the ago of .eighteen he will, if found, on again being medically examined, to be physically fit, be drafted into the Territorial Force. As a Territorial soldier he will be liable to be called out at any time for service within the Dominion. On reaching the age oi twenty-five he will be transferred tithe reserve, in which he will reman till he reaches the age of thirty, who he will be discharged. As a reservisf lie will bo liable to be called back t( his regiment in cane of war or othe national emergency. If he belongs to a rifle club he will, so long as he remains a member, be liable up to the'age of fifty-five to be called up as part of a secondary reserve to fill the ranks of the Tcir'itorial Force after its own renerve has been used up.—Ed. E.S.]