AUSTRALIAN RECRUITING.

Northern Advocate, 12 November 1917, Page 1

AUSTRALIAN RECRUITING.

CONSIDERABLE LEEWAY,

Professor Macintyre, the chairman of the New South Wales State Recruiting Committee, stated in Sydney last week that the war situation and the conditions of recruiting in Australia presented a contract which could not be viewed with equanimity by any person in the Commonwealth.

Australia, he said, must view her share in the war in the light of the facts, and it would be worse than useless—it would be absolutely unpatriotic—to slur over the fact that in this desperate hour of the Allies' peril Australia was sending fewer and fewer reinforcements. The Governmem had laid it down that 7000 men a month was the quota required to keep the Australian divisions at the front up to strength. Though every effort had been made to accomplish this, and while recognising that the success attained had been considerable, the facts were that, based on this requirement, the Commonwealth was 25,000 men short at the end of last September. Since then the disastrous industrial upheaval had overshadowed , the great interest of this world-war, and more recently the Commonwealth had not supplied even 50 per cent, of its quota. Indeed, at the moment New Zealand was sending more men to the front as reinforcements to her division than Australia was sending to make up the wastage of a force nominally five timee greater.

It was absolutely necessary for Australia to realise the seriousness of the situaton, and whither she was drifting. Whatever pledges were given by political parties, Australia's pledge, consecrated in the blood of her noblest, was "the last man and the last shilling." That was Australia's pledge overshadowing all else.