SURPLUS RECRUITS.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 14128, 3 July 1916, Page 3

SURPLUS RECRUITS.

SOUTH ISLANDERS TURNED ' DOWN.

SHARP COMPLAINTS IN PARLIA-

MENT,

(From oue own Corbespondent.)

Wellington, June 30.

Dr. Thacker talked severely in the House of Representatives to-day about the methods of the Defence ment in dealing with recruits for Re!inforcements, and about -the "cavalier way in which the surplus men- were treated. He contended that the chief j military officers, or whoever else was responsible, should be discharged for sheer incompetence. He mentioned the case of the latest Reinforcement draft from, Canterbury, which,> when it was on the point of leaving for Wellington, was found to have a surplus of 41 men. The military officers, he said, coolly declined to allow the surplus to leave, and callously informed the 41 that they would not be allowed to board the vessel at Lyttqlton. These men, pointed out Dr. Thacker, had given up their civil employment nfc the call of the department, and ay ore practically left stranded in many cr-.ses, or to return home in a disgust-: c<i and discontented state of mind with their-treatment in this instance. The Minister, who had been threatening men with compulsion if they did not volunteer for war service, replied to the Mayor of Christchurch, when a message was sent asking him if room could not be found for these' 41 men in camp: "I cannot overcrowd camps at this time of year." There was an answer! Mr. "Wilford: One of his sympathetic replies. Dr. Thacker: One of his incapable replies. Dr. Thacker and Messrs. Wifcty and Payne urged that the remedy for this situation was to establish local cair.ps. It had been a pra-re mistake not to accept men and put them into receiving camps for preliminary training until the authorities were ready to take them into the, main camps.