NATIONAL SERVICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19931, 27 April 1928, Page 14

NATIONAL SERVICE.

Sir, —The secretary of the Religious Liberty Association, *Mr. F. L. Sharp, in his contribution to your paper, suggests that there should be alternative duties to military training and service. The other day in Court four young men who claimed exemption from military training on religious conviction, were refused this exemption. One of the reasons given was that they had been offered other duties and that they would not do anything. But the young mon could not undertake these duties, because they were connected with the military machine, and would have to be done under military supervision. Some substitute for military training should be provided for our young men so that equivalent service > can be given. lam sure conscientious objectors do not to doing national service. The late Professor William James, the American philosopher, suggested that the youth of a country should undertake the disagreeable tasks of industry for a certain period. "To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to , dish washing and window cleaning, to road building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stokeholds, to the fumes of skyscrapers would our gilded youth be drafted off, according to their choice, and get the childishness knocked out of them, to come back into society with healthier ideas and soberer sympathies. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and cheaper work done cheerily because the duty is temporary and threatens not, as now, to degrads the whole remainder of one's life," How much better it would be for our young men to spend the period now spent _in military camps and parades in making roads, preparing land for settlers, developing the industries of the country, and in learning to wield implements of industry, and not weapons of destruction. Nothing would bring the classes and the masses together better than that nil our young men should take part in developing the resources of the country and proving they .can use nick and shovel as well as pen. Our land could be transformed into a veritable garden in the course of a few years if such national service, under strict discipline, was organised, and the money now spent in much of our useless defenc® utilised for national developments. Fine Sea vicm.