NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2757, 16 January 1907, Page 14

NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE.

" LETTER FROM LORD .ROBERTS. Captain Bell, of Hamilton, has received the following interesting communication from Lord Roberts: — " Dear Sir, — I have read with the greatest interest and pleasure your letter of August 29, and the cutting giving an account of the inaugural meeting of the New Zealand Empire and National Service League. A. perusal of this cutting shows that the great ideal of. universal military training has. largely through your instrumentality, taken firm root in New Zealand, and that there is every promise -of its spreading throughout that patriotic colony. I need not tell you with what feelings of sincere pleasure- I have received "this news. It confirms tho feeling I have always had that where this principle, that it" is the fiacred duty o£ every man to be trained for the national defence and to take part in it should the need arise, is approached without 'prejudice, its justice and importance will be afc once recognised by the British people. Only a short time since the National Service League heard with pleasure of tha formation of the Australian National Defence League, which has been founded on the same lines as the National Service League, in order to arouse Australians to the need of compulsory military training 1 as the true defensive -system of a modern democracy. Men of all parties have joined in the movement, and I note with particular plea-sure that this is also *the case with the league which has been so happily inaugurated in New Zealand. In pursuing: the work of arousing my fell-countrymen to the justice, the necessity, and the manifold advantages of a system under which every able-bodied man wouid be brought into close touch with the national ideala through military training in his youth, I am much encouraged to find that our kinsmen overseas are fully alive to the vital importance of this great reform, and aro supporting it with all the vigour and public spirit which characterises them. I no to with p'easure that you are proposing- to affiliate the New Zealand League to the National Service League. Wishing you e\ery success, — I am, yours very truly, Roberts, F.M., President."