THE BLUE BAND.

Observer, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 16 December 1916, Page 3

THE BLUE BAND.

And the Public Interest,

THE Minister in charge of the police has said that in every case where a constable is drawn for service, in the conscript ballot, he (the Minister) will apply for his exemption. The Minister very rightly declares that it is quite wrong to suggest that the police are shirkers. No doubt the young men who have come from the Old Country during the past two years or so as recruits to the police force were impelled by the thought that it is a much more noble thing to assist in the. moral direction of New Zea-

landers than to kill Germans. It is in the public interest that the police are not permitted to enlist. • •■ •

It is also in the public interest that a constable should be ordered to invade a district as a "confidence" man, duly licensed by the Government, and paid to lie every day and all the time, to carefully incite publicans to commit crimes against the war licensing laws, to infer that he was a wealthy stranger "looking for land," and to obtain handsome ibunches of convictions, aided and abetted by the State. Such a man couldn't be allowed to fight as a soldier. His talents as a moral regenerator would be wasted. It is also in the public interest that a small camp at Narrow Neck, containing fewer than 200 dark recruits, should be co absolutely packed with "staff" that one doesn't know whether to call the few recruite three platoons, a battalion, a regiment or a refuge. Perhaps the latter military term may be the. most acceptable to the gentlemen who are there in the public interest. It is in the public interest also that dentists (dentists that is of the Dental Association) should be immune from service except in. the home branch, and there seems to be something extraordinarily potent about the title "dental mechanic" which appals the military authorities, and induces them to implore these tradesmen not to go to war.

It is/in the public interest that at a time when the most stringent economy is said "to be necessary, dentists should rush away from small practices to become colonels, majors, captains and the like (in standing camps). It would not be in the public interest to suggest that our War Department is for a second influenced by dental or any other It would be even unkind to suggest that the Dental Corps is. a "refuge" equal in excellence to the Narrow Neck Club with so large a membership. It would not be in the. public interest to talk of the tens of thousands of pounds which are "spent in fitting, up ships, , in one port and in pulling all the gear out in another, the possibility being that it is in the public interest to keep gentlemen constantly employed in' building houses of cards and blowing them down again. • • • It. is. in the public interest that if say 100 soldiers are. to be fed that meals should be provided for say 300, so that the poor gentlemen who have pig farms in the vicinity of camps may feed the baeoners on rounds of beef and pounds of butter, so that in the public interest the citizen shall pay Is. 3d a pound for bacon. It is the public which will pay the interest. The expenses of military administration in NewZealand are appalling, and as military expenditure in this country is just beginning, it might be in the public interest if a soldier in. high position, courageous, honourable, and uninfluenced by politics (an almost impossible thing in New Zealand) were to thoroiighly sift the "refuges" and the hideous Avaste of material and money expended in maintaining a very small army.