THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1914. UNIVERSAL SERVICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15500, 6 January 1914, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1914. UNIVERSAL SERVICE.

The statement of the Canadian Minister for Customs, made after visiting Australasia, that "the evidence was plain, despite everything said to the contrary, that the priiciple of universal service had sunk deeply in the mind of the people, and was being successfully* carried out," will commend itself to Australians and New Zealanders. There is an organised plan, evolved by the invariable minority which opposes all great national movements, to discredit our earnest and sincere efforts at placing the defences of our dominions upon a sound footing. These malcontents find as much gratification in spreading gross misrepresentations concerning the working of the Defence Acts of New Zealand and Australia as patriotic citizens do in the discharge of their duty. They exhaust their every energy in circulating the libel that the average colonial lad has no desire to make any sacrifice for his country, and that " conscription" is only enforced in this part of the world by a persecution which may be compared to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The truth is, of course, that both Australians and New Zealanders have placed universal training outside the narrow limits of party politics. The Labour Government of the Commonwealth inaugurated the universal training of its youth with the cordial support and unqualified approval of the Liberal Opposition: as a consequence, the recent change of Federal government has not affected in the slightest degree the unanimous legislative and administrative determination to make Australia strong against inevitable Asiatic attack In New Zealand, public men who differ as widely in their general political views as Mr. Robert McNab and, Mr.- James Allen cooperated in bringing about the training system. It is cheering to recall that no member of Parliament did more to educate the public on this , supreme question than the champion of leasehold, whose crusade on behalf of. universal train-, ing was the prelude to its institution. Mr. Arthur Myers, when Minister for Defence, stoutly and enthusiastically carried on the work of his predecessor; and Mr. James Allen, as we all know, waives even his constitutional inclination to rigid economy in favour of the national defence system. If New Zealand and Australia were as sympathetic with desirable immigration as they are with universal training we should have nothing to fear from Asia, and the . strength of our dominions would be a deeding, factor in the maintenance of European peace. The I.W.W. is, of course, anti-national and therefore antitraininc, but we hardly think that the tirades of foreign agitators, who prefer "sabotage" to conciliation, and strikes to arbitration, can be taken as representative of colonial feeling. Mr. Foster, the Canadian Minister for Customs, was greatly interested in our defence movements, and made a personal investigation of the matter when in Australia. He came to the only conclusion possible to any fair-minded critic, not only that training is popular,

'-* tV >o.t the results, both morally and physically, are among its great advantages.

Whatever is said on behalf of universal training will have no influence upon the ironbound prejudices of those who are determined to believe that the British peoples should throw down their arms in the face of growing international perils. Nothing can convince a man against his will, and the only way to convert these unreasonable individuals is to submit them to the dire penalties of defencelessness. Fortunately for the dominions this form of persuasion is not proposed by the great mass of our peoples, who recognise that if it were resorted to the patriotic would Buffer with the unpatriotic, the innocent with the guilty. In the United Kingdom, however, is a multitude which is only passively averse to universal training, having inherited through a century of peace the idea that Britannia needs no other bulwarks than her navy. The fallacy of this idea is evident to all who see how the Imperial naval strength is being tethered to the North Sea by the monumental weakness of the territorial forces and how Germany's ambition is being encouraged by the fact that if Britain's naval shield can be broken through there is no reason to think that her citizens could protect themselves agahut a German army. The misrepresenta-

tion of colonial universal training is really inspired by the frantic effort of Little Englanders, egged on by continental sympathisers, to prevent the United Kingdom folio-wing the

example of New Zealand and Australia. The principle is beyond assault in these dominions, but it can easily be misunderstood by millions of bewildered people at Home. From the colonial point of view, and having in mind the character of the immigration we desire, this misunderstanding is not an unmixed evil. Those who have heard with sympathetic readiness the appeal of Lord Roberts, and have accepted, naturally and easily, the principle that a country worth having is worth defending, are the men and women most likely to enter heartily into the spirit of our colonial life. They have an instinct for discipline, a sense of national organisation, a belief in the state, and a repugnance to foreign interference with national ideals. Many receat immigrants to these dominions are the aftermath of the belief spread far and wide over the world that in these new lands every erratic gospel would find a congenial soil, and tha. social revolutions could be brought about without difficulty by any verbose fanatic. The great majority of syndicalists in the colonies are newcomers, who, finding themselves unnoticed in their own countries, decided to give New Zealand and Australia the doubtful benefit of their vagaries. The more Little Englanders denounce and misrepresent our training systems, the less we are likely to be sought out by those who view with scorn and hatred the thought of violence to any but their immediate neighbours. As Mr. T. Mackenzie very properly told the British people some time ago, "New Zealand does not desire any immigrants who object to national defence." There are immense numbers in the United Kingdom who would prefer their lads to grow up under universal training conditions and if all others keep out of the country so much the better for us. At the same time, it is most regrettable that the Mother Country should remain practically without domestic defence in the face of a continent wherein every man is a trained soldier, an-! for this reason it is to be hoped that a truesunderstanding of our colonial tran> ing systems will remove the ignorance of the question still prevailing at Home.