WORLD SITUATION DEMANDS DEFENCE PREPAREDNESS -- DIGGER-KIWI OPINION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22587, 16 March 1948, Page 6

WORLD SITUATION DEMANDS DEFENCE PREPAREDNESS -- DIGGER-KIWI OPINION

SUBSCRIBING unanimously to the view that the world situation is deteriorating, and that New Zealand has a duty to prepare itself for defence, delegates of returned servicemen’s organisations throughout the Cishorne and East Coast district recorded on Saturday, at a conference sponsored by the Gisborne R.S.A., full support for a Wanganui proposal for the immediate clarification of the Government’s policy on compulsory national military training.

Opening the discussion, Mr. J. Leggat president of the Gisborne association, stated that he had a horror of the type of compulsory training which was carried on prior to the war in this Dominion.

training,” he continued. “On the other hand, the volunteer spirit is good, but we can remember when as Territorials we were looked on as ‘week end soldiers and ‘Sunday glamour-boys’. It should not be forgotten that it was the Territorial-trained men who held Crete for as long as it was held.” ‘There is no doubt in our minds that there is only one thing we can do now ” commented Mr. M. R. Maude. “We have to think and act in terms of preparedness. Whether a resolution carthis gathering has any weight with the Government is not the important issue. The more we can bring the matter into public discussion the better chance we have of getting somewhere with it.

Those who had taken part in Territorial training knew that a great deal of time had been wasted, and that what training was done was severely handicapped by lack of equipment. “The military mind being what it is, there is always a tendency to train men for the last war,” he added. “Up to 1939, the people of this country had been peace-conscious for 15 years or so, and we know that when war came we had about three Bren guns in New Zealand, and the latest equipment for dealing with armour was the Stokes anti-tank gun. We know that a handful of good planes would probably have saved Crete.

Consistent Policy of N.Z.R.S.A. added that he supported he Wanganui proposal for preparation tor adequate defence of this Dominion. Wherever. the responsibility for lack of preparation for the last war might lie, it was not at the door of the Returned Services’ Association, Mr. Gordon Jones pointed out. The association had consistently urged that national military training on a compulsory basis should be re-introduced; and had pointed out the inevitable result of a policy of voluntary training which would throw the keenest of the county 3 young men into action before the full resources of the Dominion could be mobilised.

“We must ask ourselves, as the victims of Government inertia prior to tlie last war, whether we have not a duty to bring to the consciousness of the public the necessity of seeing that the chaps who will have to bear the brunt of any new conflict will not he sent into battle half-equipped. We cannot evade the fact that the world situation today is blacker than it was in early 1939,”

Mr. B. D. Jurgens, Nuhaka, stated that his association had not discussed tlie Wanganui proposal, but his own opinion coincided with that of the president. “Sunday Glamour-Boys Held Crete” Men of tiie Second Echelon had had a disillusioning experience, and he and others had registered the conviction that they should do their best to see that the same thing did not happen again. “Compulsion does not produce the best spirit among the men who do the

There was no pleasure in reflecting that the association was right on that occasion, that tlie outbreak of war had produced exactly the conditions forecast by the association, and that the Government belatedly adopted compulsory service as an absolute necessity in face of the possibility of defeat. After other speakers had supported the proposal, the "onference decided, on the motion of Mr. .Jurgens, to reaffirm the New Zealand R.S.A. policy of national service on a universal basis.