DEFENCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13890, 29 April 1909, Page 3

DEFENCE.

ADDRESS BY'Mil ALLEN. .Per Press Association. MILTON, April 28At Milton to-night Mr Allen M.P., addressed a meeting of his constituents on the subject of defence. He said that though he had hung on as a volunteer officer year after year in the hope that things would better themselves and that the young men of the country would realise what patriotism really was, he was now forced into the position that the whole thing was on wrong lines, and was o great waste of money. In the Otago district there -ire supposed to be 4730 officers ana men, and yet at the Easter encampment the attendance was only 1414 (.including 307 cadets). Mr Allen advocated universal training, where everybody shall give something at any rate of his time and of his ability .to the service of his country. Nothing, he savs,.is further from his mmd than the bugbear of conscription. What he urces is a system that has been tried elsewhere and which has proved itseir to a verv large extent a success, lie does not'believe that national training should end at 21 years. He would begin with the cadet and carry on the training consecutively to 21 and from that time onward men should be brought out annually, for a certain

amount of training, so that in the course of time there ought to be such a force ready to take arms that even the most powerful nation approximated to us would hesitate to come into conflict with us. We could not shirk this responsibility and we could not make preparations for it in a day. The Australians, he contended, were going on right lines generally in the matter of defence, and they were backed up by expert opinion as expressed at the colonial conference. Mr Allen was thanked for his address and the meeting carried a resolution in favour of universal training, both for military and naval defence. .