He'd Send 40-Year-olds To War First

Northern Advocate, 9 January 1940, Page 3

He'd Send 40-Year-olds To War First

gIXTY-FIVE YEARS OLD AND ENLISTED. That’s what lur. W. Tunstali thinks of the international situation. In his opinion the military authorities are all wrong. They shouldn’t send the young men first, he said.

Nothing He’d Like Better.

If this 65-year-old had his way the first to be called would be men between forty and forty-five. ‘‘What's the use of leaving a country of old people?” he asked. “They haven’t long to ‘■live, but the young man has his life before him and a country to build. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to get over there—to Finland for preference, because there’s not much doing on the Western Front,” he said. He holds a second-class mining engineer's ticket and a first-class ambulance ticket; so considers himself well qualified to serve. He' was one of the three men from Hikurangi who did rescue work in the Huntly disaster many years ago. Turned Down in 1914-1918. A “football knee” prevented his services being accepted in the last war; but the knee has given him no trouble in the last 20 years. “They’ve turned me down, but if there is anything I can do to let a younger chap go I’ll do it,” he added. “If there’s anything I can do, i’ll be there.”