FARMERS AND COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18540, 10 April 1930, Page 4

FARMERS AND COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING.

To the Editor of the “ Timaru Herald.” Sir,—Those farmers who, last Friday, advocated the continuance of compulsory military training in this country, are more to be pitied than blamed, for they were actuated by impulse or suggestion and not by a knowledge of the subject. The agricultural mind has seldom shed light on the path of human progress. Farmers have always hindered rather than helped the onward march of mankind. Everywhere, and in all times, except in the days of the Caesars, they have tennaciously clung to what was antiquated, erroneously believing that the things handed down from the past had a divine origin, and must be preserved at all hazards as holy and beneficent; and, although daily experience demonstrated the hollowness of this belief, it was with difficulty that they could be made to change it; and, in the majority of cases they made the change only when it was made clear to them that it would pay them to do so. It is proverbial that farmers are mentally slow and short-sighted, and easily made to dance to every tune played by those who know how to take advantage of them. In looking after their own interests, they are as helpless as so many mullets among sharks. Fortunately there are many exceptions, but these are looked upon by the rank and file of ordinary farmers as cranks, faddists and theorists, who are not practical farmers like themselves. But, the remarkable thing is that as a rule, the cranks and theorists dance rings round the so-called practical men, whom they frequently compel, by force of their example, to break away from traditional methods that have gone out of date. It will be a happy day for farmers when, as a class, they realise that they are the prey to a multitude of tricksters, and it will be a red letter day in the life of everyone of them when it dawns on them, that the greatest of all their numerous enemies are the war profiteers of the world, who have succeeded in getting so many of j them to believe that old exploded fallacy, that the surest way to prevent war is to prepare for it, as if the best way to prevent children from cutting themselves and others is to give them open knives and razors to play with. Farmers have yet to learn that wars are always, without a single exception, deliberately planned and cold-bloodedly executed, for profit and profit alone, however much they may have their patriotism aroused, and however much they may be misled by lies fabricated by the agents of the profiteers. When they have assimilated this fact they will not be so eager to tout for the sale of war material, which they do every time they advocate compulsory military training. And. when it dawns on them that rather than make everybody a soldier who is to fight some day, it would be infinitely cheaper and far safer to expend our energies and our money in laying the promoters of war by the heels, and so preserve the peace of the world indefinitely, without huge armies and navies which are crushing the peoples of the earth by their enormous cost.—l am, etc. AGRICOLA. Timaru, April 7.