WILL HE GO?

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 14 August 1915, Page 3

WILL HE GO?

Who? Colonel Allen

IF the people of New Zealand could be asked what is the gravest political necessity of the moment they would be justified in saying "that Allen must go." Despite everything that has been advanced against the perpetration of the huge central mobilisation camp at Trentham, despite the evidence of medical officers, medical men who are not officers, soldiers who have been sick, soldiers who have not 'been sick; despite cerebro-spinal meningitis, measles, influenza and other diseases, Mr Allen is stall adamant. The Mayor of Auckland, because he has been forced by public opinion to do so, has protested, not so much because Auckland has no camp but because Auckland citizens' sons have died at Trentham, against a revival of the horrors. One imagines the self-satisfied smile which irradiated the face of the Minister when he penned the following to Mr Gunson: "May I suggest that you can do real Imperial service by allaying any unjustifiable uneasiness that may prevail in Auckland." This suggests that whatever happens, whatever the Defence Department may do, however many men die of the fearful' and malignant scourge; of meningitis, a mayor or a citizen is doing "real Imperial service" by shutting, up about it. The amazing ly stubborn Mr Allen may rest assured that the people will not shut up about it and that there will be no rest for this Minister until he consents to a system of decentralisation and the thorough "rest" that Trentham needs.

The suggestion is that parents whose boys are to face the terrors of disease (infinitely worse than facing Huns or Turks) should sit and twist their thumbs while preventable death and hideous sorrow break the hearts of parents. The Minister appears almost to disregard the human aspect. Why should not these boys die and their parents suffer incurable sorrow if "my experts" say it is to be so? Why shouldn't the authorities be offered the convenience of having the graves all in the one s ,pot—a monument to their efficiency? Is Trentham suitable for immediate reoccupation ? "It is as healthy, if not healthier" than the other camps. If the other camps are as "healthy" as Trentham, why have any of them?

While Mr Allen is blathering in defence of Trentham Australia acts. Did he read this: "A new scheme of training the Australian recruits which is to be adbpted involves the breaking up of the present big camps, and the formation of a number of smaller camps. All troops will! in future be organised as Infantry Battalions of a thousand men, under a Headquarters Staff. Each Colonel will be solely responsible for his own camp. Owing to an outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis, and three deaths that have occurred at the Liverpool camp recruits are not being sent to camp for the time being. The first death from the same disease is reported from the Victorian camp." Australia does not send recruits to camp to see if they are immune from this ghastly disease. Will Mr Allien undertake to watch a patient die of it? It is possibly the only method that would reach his heart. If he heard the ceaseless moan of the soldier who wanted' to fight men but who was forced to fight "the King of Terrors he would not only wake up but he'd do the only thing he's wanted to do—resign!