ARMY CAREERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3853, 17 January 1928, Page 17

ARMY CAREERS.

NO KEENNESS IN AUSTRALIA.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, January 3. It is an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless a fact, that. Australia, a vast continent whose insularity and sparse population leave it in a most vulnerable position, makes only a sort of sideline of defence. A number of Sydney schoolmasters have been asked the reason, as far as they can give it, for the general disinclination of boys to adopt the army as a career. The general reply, in effect, is that the material advantages and prospects of other professions far outweigh those of the army. The fact is that, except for the rare few who, after many long years, attain to distinguished rank, the pay and conditions and general outlook are such as a skilled tradesman would scorn. In these materialistic and mercenary days, youths, in seeking a profession, are far less inclined to offer themselves on the altar of their country than they were formerly. Before the war, thei’o was no lack of candidates for entry into the professional army. Since then, there has been a marked falling-off, due to a wave of economy which hit both the naval and military services, and to tho natural fear that a young man, after sacrificing the best of his years at soldiering, might find his occupation gone. Federal Governments will possibly wake up to the fact some day that it pays better to spend more on defence, and on encouraging youths to enter the profession of arms, "and far less on costly, and, for the most pari, futile commissions, if they have to cut their suits according to ' their financial cloth.