THE REGISTRATION DODGERS.

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 867, 16 February 1917, Page 6

THE REGISTRATION DODGERS.

Are They Never to be Punished? a month, has passed since -*-• the Minister of Defence, or some one 'on his behalf, informed the press that steps being actively taken to secure: the prosecution of the dodgers and shirkers who sneaked out of their legal duty and never enrolled th'eir names on the National Register. And still there have been no prosecutions. We have drawn attention once before to what is, rapidly, becoming a public scandal, namely, that men who have deliberately dodged their duty should be free to walk about the. streets—and wharves I—and openly boast that they never signed the register. It has been said that time was required to allow ,the police to make the necessary enquiries so as to be able to track down the dodgers and bring them before the Courts. But, surely, the police have had plenty of time to make such enquiries. Months have passed by since the National Register was completed, and, there should now' be no difficulty in bringing quite: a number of cases before the Courts. ©• .- '■'■»■''■ •' H :• ..O " It is monstrously unjust that married men should be sent to-: the front, often at the cost of their businesses being ruined, when scores of single men are swaggering about, and, if popular rumour speaks truly, many of them actually bragging that they haven't signed the adjeetived register and don't intend to. We can assure , the " Defence Department, as we did a fortnight ago, that its. apathy and laxness with regard to these dodgers and shirkers is not .calculated to impress the* public mind with much respect for the Departmental method, or lack of.'method, in this .particularmatter.