DEFENCE SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22329, 1 August 1934, Page 4

DEFENCE SYSTEM

BASIS OF PEACE-TIME TRAINING FRAMEWORK FOR WAR EMERGENCY (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, July 31. That peace-time military training should provide the framework and machinery for expansion and training in the event of war is the belief of Sir William SinclairBurgess, General Officer Commanding the New Zealand Forces. In his annual report ou the Defence Forces, which was tabled in tire House of Representatives to-day, Major-general Sir William Sin-claii-Burgess says that it is of vital importance that this object of peace-time training should be clearly defined. _ _ “ To attain this,” he continues, “ it is not only necessary that the soldiery efficiency of the units as expressed in the maintenance of discipline and esprit de corps should be brought to the highest possible level, but also that a system of training should be developed and a cadre of instructors built up,, with the primary purpose of having an adequate training organisation and a sufficient number of instructors to give effect to it when required. This requires not only a sound system of training the instructors themselves, but also an equally efficient organisation for training private soldiers, as it is from the latter that the additional noncommissioned officers required on mobilisation will be drawn.” t Most of the territorial officers were more capable of training their subordinates to be leaders than of training them to be instructors, he continues. Thus it must be accepted that the detail work of training instructors must be done by the Permanent Forces. With that object he had directed that the scope of training of the territorial force was to be as follows:

1. Officers and n.c.o.’s to reach a standard of training which would enable them to command and train their present units and sub-units. 2. Men fully trained in elementary • drill and their duties within their units; to be sufficiently well grounded in the use of their weapons and as "specialists” to ensure their reaching the standard required for war after a short period of intensive training. Sir William said that he considered the former to be far more important, as the training of a leader and instructor demanded long and continuous instruction. During the past training year, although many parades additional to those prescribed had been carried out by .all units, it had frequently been impossible to depend on the regular attendance of sufficient trained men on a given date to ensure systematic progressive instruction. With the introduction of pay for hometraining it was hoped that the regularity of attendance would improve and so ensure methodical progressive instruction.