SOLDIERS' RIGHTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16646, 3 September 1914, Page 6

SOLDIERS' RIGHTS.

The Prime Minister's prediction that it would prove an extremelv difficult matter to draft a Bill that would enable the members of the Fxpeditionary * Forces to exerciso their votes at tho parliamentary election and the licensing poll has been abundantly justified by the production of two of the most extraordinary measures that have ever appeared in the House cf Representatives. Mr ( Fisher's first Bill, which was introduced by Governor's message on Tuesday evening, proposed to take a poll of the members of the forces while. in camp in England on the day before the election in the Dominion. The names of all the l candidates for all the constituencies were to be cabled Home, and when the enfranchised soldiers had recorded their votes under the supervision of an officer of the Electoral Department, the results were to be cabled to New Zealand. The Bill assumed that the voters would be all in one camp, and that the military authorities would see no objection to their taking part in a political contest in the midst of their training for the great task that lies before them. Mr Fisher explained that, if. the men were, actually at the front, engaged in investing Berlin or' ejecting the Ger-. mans from Paris, it might be impossible for them to exercise . their votes, and that he would not attempt to make provision for such a contingency. The objections to this measure were so obvious that the Minister himself cannot have been' greatly surprised when members on both sides of the House denounced it in unmeasured terms- The most effective indictment came froan Mr G. W. Russell, who said it wouH bo positively indecent to introduce party controversies into a camp where the pick of the young men of the country were gathered together in the highest spirit of patriotism and comradeship to prepare themselves in amity and good fellowship for tho defence of tho Empire. That they should be invited to quarrel over candidates and policies at such a time was simply unthinkable. But the House, still following the impulse of its heart, rather than the reason of its head, sought to find a way out of the difficulty by the appointment of a committee to deviso some better scheme -than the one proposed in Mr Fisher's Bill. The committee's scheme is the one which was dealt with last night, and which was shown to be little more practicable, than the one devised by the Minister. . Its intentions ar& well enough. It proposes to allow the members of the forces to vote before they leave the Dominion for any party they please—Government, Opposition or Labour—and to leave the final allotment of the votes in tho event of there being more than one candidate of a particular colour in any constituency to the party leader immediately concerned.. Probably it would be difficult to get nearer to a practicable scheme than this, but" unfortunately tho Bill is so badly drafted that no body of laymen could ever hope to reconcile it to the spirit of the rest of -the country's electoral law. Votes are to be given to every member of the forces, whether of , legal age or not; his political convictions aro to be reduced to- party preferences; his constituency is to be arbitrarily fixed by his last place of residence in this country; and when everything else fails, regulations made by Order-in-Council are to come to his rescue and to the rescue of the electoral authorities. The Bill got through the House without, material amendment. That was assured by the. very proper enthusiasm of the members of the elected Chamber, but when it reaches the Council it will encounter sober, logical examination which, without doing any violence to the patriotic sentiment of the public, may consign it to the limbo reserved for the impracticable aspirations of members of Parliament. ...... ~, .