The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4475, 16 February 1917, Page 4

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917.

The intimation by the Minister for Defence that the First Military Division will he exhausted within four or five months will have fallen like a bombshell amongst the married men who go to form the Second Division. It is a sharp reminder to all such reservists that they should begin to put their affairs in order so that they may be ready when called upon to go into camp. We are afraid that the majority of the members of the Second Division may have been reckoning upon a more lengthy period of freedom from liability to serve their King and Empire. The surprising part of the matter is that all along there have been many married men who have continued to labor under the impression that the Second Division would never be called up at all. In this belief the members of the Second Division have, of course, never had any encouragement on the part of the military authorities. As far as can be gathered, the exact date when the first call will be made on the married men cannot be gauged with certainty, but August is fixed by those who feel competent to express an opinion on the matter as the latest possible month. There can he no question but that in the interim a vigorous final combing out amongst the balance of the single men will be instituted, and this will apply also to exempted trades and Government departments. Even so the work of classifying the j Second Division is now being taken in hand. As to what principle is being adopted no official announcement has so far been made. The general impression is, however, that the classification is proceeding according

The Warning to the Second Division.

to size of family, and that the mairied men will be balloted by classes the men without children first, then the men with one child, the men with two children, and so on. Perhaps the j men- without children and the men with only one child may .jgrm the initial group, ft would be difficult to say how many drafts would be P 1 vided by each class. At all events calculations would be subject to man\ disturbing factors, such, for instance, as the voluntary enlistment of so many married men during the past thirty months and the placing of men married since April 1915 in the I'Jrst Division. Maybe there are from SOW to 10,000 men of military age married without children available for the ballot, and the number may prove larger. The number of married, men with one child should exceed 15,000, and probably there are at least as manv men in the class with two chii ren. * It is also of interest to mention tha the military medical authorities are disposed to believe from the evidence already before them that the proportion of rejections among balloted married men will be much sma “f r than among balloted single men. The hirst Division provided more than 50,000 fit recruits before the balloting commenced, and the fine response o the volunteers naturally lowered the physical average of this Division, which still contained all the men who had been rejected under the voluntary system. It is to be trusted that there are good grounds for the belief that the exhaustion of the First Division will be completed over the whole Dominion before any Second Division men are called up. Such a step would, of course, be likely to entail the temporary suspension ol the quota system since the various military districts will not all finish their First Division men in the same month. Under such a scheme districts in whic-h voluntary recruiting has been particularly good and this remark applies to Poverty Bay may, therefore, escape one ballot or even two ballots, while the remaining members of the First Division alf being drawn on in other districts. All parts of the Dominion would, them start level in dealing with the married men, which, it will he agreed would he only right and proper. The members of the Second Divisior would do well to bear in mind thai the date when the First Division nil he exhausted is now not far distant