Street Collections for Home Defence

Southland Times, Issue 24421, 29 April 1941, Page 4

Street Collections for Home Defence

rpHE Prime Minister’s announceJ- ment that all .303 rifles are to be impressed is welcome, though long overdue. For months past the training of the Home Guard has been gravely handicapped by the shortage of rifles. Many Guardsmen have found it difficult to take their work seriously, or to believe that they are really intended to constitute a .first line of defence (as they have been told), while as many as 20,000 serviceable rifles have been allowed to remain in private hands. Now that the impressment has been decided on, it is to be hoped that there will be no further delays and that the rifles will be allocated among the different units as speedily as possible. But the Government’s responsibility to the Home Guard does not end with the provision of a limited number of rifles. If the Guard is in fact to be the Dominion’s first line of defence there are the strongest reasons why it should be placed under the direct control of the military authorities, not (as is apparently contemplated) when the country is on the point of being invaded, but now, while there is still time to prepare, and co-ordinate, comprehensive defence plans. Failing this change—and the Government’ seems inflexibly opposed to it —the local organization of the Guard should be strengthened and funds provided to enable it to obtain what equipment it can, and to carry out the training that is asked of it.

In acknowledging a gift of £5 from a correspondent of The Southland Times last week Major H. W. Slater, the officer commanding the Home Guard in Invercargill, said that money was urgently required for four purposes:—(l) To permit the Guard to carry out more advanced training operations on its defence area; (2) to purchase ammunition for shooting practice; (3)

to buy stationery and military manuals; and (4) to repair about 200 rifles “if the .department saw fit to grant the necessary authority.” It must have struck many readers as grotesque that a force which is supposed to bear the brunt of any attack on the Dominion’s shores should be compelled to appeal to the public for donations to buy ammunition and petrol, and to pay for repairs to rifles. Is this the best the country can do in the gravest hour of its history? Although internal State expenditure in the year just ended was estimated to reach the record total of £80,000,000, the Government could devote only about one-fourth of this sum to defence. And the best it could offer the Home Guard, the first line of defence, was a capitation fee of one shilling a quarter! The rest of the burden it tried to thrust on to the shoulders of the local bodies, which, not unnaturally, have for the most part declined to accept what is clearly the responsibility of the State. The situation would indeed be grotesque —if it were not calamitous. We can spend £60,000,000 on public works, on Social Security benefits, on making ourselves comfortable and keeping our little paradise warm. But when it comes to providing equipment and petrol for a force that has been allotted a vital part in the country’s defence, we tell them to go and hold a street collection!