SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONSCRIPTION.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13992, 30 August 1909, Page 3

SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONSCRIPTION.

"Saturday afternoon conscription" is commended by a writer ui national Defence. It means, he says, that all the male able-bodied youth of the nation, with few exceptions, shall by Act of xJarhanient be required to devoite their Saturday afternoons for four years, say, between the ages of 17 and 21, to learning company and battalion drill, ritleshootiug,, elementary tactics, such as scouting, range-finding, entrenching, taking advantage of irregularities in the ground, and, whenever practicable, horsemanship and gunnery. In place of devoting their Saturday half-holi-days, as they do at present, to cricket, hockey, cycling, golfing, tennis, yachting, motoring, bridge, loafing, idling, or worse, the male youth of tne nation would be obliged to spend four hours every Saturday afternoon in exercises that will improve their physique, develop their brains, and benefit the nation. Saturday conscription would be universal, and the fact of every ablebodied youth, both cook's son and duke's son, joining in it would remove any feeling of individual hardship, and add zest to the practice. If Saturday's conscription became law, says the writer, it would probably be advisable to permit no young man to enlist in the regular army until he had attained his 2l)th birthday—that is, until lie had passed through at least three years of Saturday training. This rule would not, of course, prevent older men who had already completed the full period of Saturday conscription from enlisting if they wished to do so. The cost of Saturday conscription, including drill halls, armouries, weapons, rifle ranges, and a large number of military inspectors and instructors, will doubtless be considerable, but this expenditure, the writer thinks, will be to a large degree counterbalanced by the great saving to the nation in getting rid of our present system of recruiting immature lads who for many years arc housed, fed,.clothed, trained, and paid by the taxpayers, though for all these years these hoy soldiers are unfit to face the enemy in the field or stand hardship, or serve in a bad climate, and numbers of whom, after all this trouble and expense, turn out wastrels from disease or inefficiency, and never join the effective forces at all.