ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1919. THE NEW MILITARY TRAINING SCHEME.

Marlborough Express, Volume LIII, Issue 167, 16 July 1919, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1919. THE NEW MILITARY TRAINING SCHEME.

One of the most important responsibilities and dutiqs of. the present Parliament during its. final and necessarily brief session will be a very careful and critical examination of the new system of compulsory military training which ha 3 been drawn up'by the Defence Department, and details of which have been made public. Prophecy is proverbially unprofitable, and more particularly is it difficult to predict, with any degree of confidence, what may or may not take place in the political world. Judging, however, by what has apptared in the public press, and from the general trend of public opinion as it finds individual .expression, it is safe to anticipate a somewhat mixed reception for the training scheme put forward by Sir James Allen and his military advisers. That compulsory military, training' of some kind is absolutely necessary as a safeguard against the .horrors of a future war in which th^ ; Dominion might find itself involved .most, people, outside the "peace-at-l-any-price*' section of the community,. will be agreed. No one outside a_ mental hospital believes that war lias for ever disappeared, from the earth with the.signing of tho Versailles Treaty, and in the opinioi of many earnest students and expert authorities on international polities the scene ov the next great conflict is more likely to be placed in the East, and in the Pacific, than in Europe and the Atlantic or the Mediterranean.

Undoubtedly the Avar has greatly affected the future of such great Asiatic" States as Japan and China, and whilst the "Yellow Peril" may not be an immediate danger there are possibilities of'more than one international dispute between European and Asiatic, which might only too probably be attended by the 'most: serious consequences to the Australian Commonwealth and to New Zealand. All this suggests, that the British communities in the Pacific, peaceloving and haters of militarism pure and simple as they may be, would be running a terrible risk did they not i make wise and. 'adequate provision for the defence of their countries and their homes. Due preparation for war in times of peace is still the best safeguard against war. Much is hoped and expected from the League of Nations as a means to permanent preservation of the world's peace, but when we remember the ioseate predictiois <vhich followed the establishment of the Hague Peace Conference and the complete failure of international combination to prevent the Central Powers from hurling Europe into a welter of bloodshed, n i'sery, and ruin,, we confess that we are none too optimistic as to the success of _ President Wilson's muchcherished panacea, to secure universal reace. Had Great Britain followed the wise counsel Tot the late Lord Roberts and madfe provision for a system under which an army, not merely of 100,000, but of half a million well-trained soldiers, could have been thrown into ? Belgium or France in August and September of 1914, it is safe to say that Germany would \ never have dared to challenge France, and with her.Great Britain, and that millions of human lives would have been siived.

The condition of preparedness once granted, tho question arises as to the eiaet form which such a. safeguard should assumel Some form of interImperial combination for defence has no doubt been decided upon in London, and when tli3 Prime Minister meets Parliament h z will probably afford us some information on that point. For the present, however, we si re primarily and most intimately concerned with the concrete proposals set forth by. Sir James Allen and the Defence Department with regard to home defence here in New Zealand. Jhe main objection, to Sir James Allen s training scheme has centred round the proposal for a four months' period of military training for young men of a certain age. At first it was enoneously assumed that this four months' segregation of a portion of the community in military training camps would be an annual affair. 11. is. hbwe?»r," lias been explained by Sir James Allen to have been a misconception. Nevertheless, even as the scheme now stands, it can scarcely be considered satisfactory. To us it seems cumbrous in detail and calculated m operation to cause an unnecessarily serious disturbance of inaustrinl nnrl commercial conditions. Much is made by tha Department of

tli© alleged incapacity of the New Zealand reinforcements to take the field without undergoing a Jengthy (six months') period of further training in Egypt and in England. But unless we are much mistaken more than one reinforcement was rushed to tho front after an interval of only a fortnigiit or three weeks at the Egyptian or English base, and, deppite the luck of that further and special training upon which Sir James Allen now lays such stress, exhibited a spirit of discipline, splendid courage, and actual fighting ability which won them the admiration of leading British and French commanders. And if the training at this end were inadequare and faulty, was ! not that, in a large degree, due to the fact that the instructors and permanent officers at Trentham and Featherston were men who, in many instanc6s, had had no practical experience of actual warfare? Men vho were properly qualified—by service at the front in the earlier period of the war—wero afterwards available in large numbers to act as instructors, but except in a few instances they were not utilised at this end as they should have been. For some years to come men of high military standing who have themselves been through every phase of modern warfare will be available for training the young New Zealand recruits, and in future the provision of foreign training for foreign service may surely be disregarded as unnecessary. ' H remains to be seen whether Parliamont will approve of the four riionths' training proposal, exception to which will not be confined to the Labor party, but will also be mani- ! fested by employers in, various industries. Also, Parliament should carefully examine the question of the proposed new system of military training" on its financial side. We see no reason why the cost of the new system, , due 'allowance being made for the higher;, salaries and the increase in general expenses rendered necessary by the changed economic conditions of the times, should be very greatly in excess of th'it of the old Territorial sj stein-. The Defence Department has, we cheerfully admit, done excellent work during the war period, but undoubtedly there has been grievous extravagance, and the public generally has long been of opinion that the pruning-knife of retrenchment should now be applied very freely. •The "brass-hatted army" of well-paid and liberally "allowanced" officers and departmental officials might very well,* so most people consider, be cut down very considerably, not only in number but m- cost per head to' tho State; but we fear very much-that, taken as a whole, the new scheme will require for its carrying out almost as .extensive a staff as existed, when the country was actually at war. We may on this point be doing the Department an injustice, but New Zealanders know from sad experience how difficult it is, w hen once a Government department has been organised for some special purpose, to weed put the non-essentials tend make piudent retrenchment when the special conditions of (the situation have largely changed or entirely disappeared. It is sincerely to be.hoped that Parliament, in its last session, will exercise a most rigid scrutiny of the Defence Department's proposals, and especially its financial estimates! Any failure to do so, any blind and general acceptance of the new scheme and all its economic and financial accompaniments and liabilities, would constitute a- grave dereliction of public duty, and one- which the electors vould jn-operly resent when the eventful polling-day comes round.