MILITARY TRAINING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18100, 17 May 1919, Page 9

MILITARY TRAINING.

GENERAL RICHARDSON’S ADVOCACY. [Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, May 16. At tho annual meeting of the Wellington Officers’ Institute to-night a welcome was proffered to BrigadierGeneral Richardson, in his reply General Richardson urged that the system of training should be maintained id this country. They could not afford to be without adequate defence. All sorts of wild ideas had got about that there was to be no compulsory training after the war, that armies would not be needed, that the Peace Conference would for ever limit military force to the performance of mere police duties. Those who thought, who could visualise the future, would never submit to the abolition of military force designed purely for defence. In addition to tho necessity of having a force, there was to be considered its value in building up the youth of the nation. He believed that in England 60 per cent or tho men examined for military service had been classed physically as lower than A; they had been marked CB. That wne why so much had been said about England being a C 3 nation. If the system of compulsory training were used for nothing but the building up of the nation’s manhood the money spent upon it would be well invested. He did not know what percentage o’ rejected there had been in this countryj but he was certain the system o* training employed had been largely responsible for the fact that New Zealand had been able to send away such a fine body of men. It had been one of the surprises of the authorities in i j Country that draft after draft had shown practically no diminution in physique. He urged that the system thnt_ had been in vogue here shoind conltone and that the Territorial force should be maintained.