THE NAVY’S PERSONNEL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 299, 19 December 1933, Page 6

THE NAVY’S PERSONNEL

personnel of the British Navy requires the enlistment of 8000 new men each year, but despite the ranks of the unem-, ployed being swelled in recent years, this annual quota to the Navy is not forthcoming. The reason for this is not hard to find: when youngsters were unable to find employment they enlisted in either the Army or the Navy. The voluntary system of recruitment was, in fact, a veiled compulsory system, but the compulsion was not legal, it was economic. Kipling has told how the discharged man changed his name and took the shilling as a raw recruit, to get “out of the street and back to the Army again.’’ Now, of course, there are over 10,000,000 registered unemployed, most of whom are in receipt of sustenance pay from the Unemployed Insurance Fund. The result of the operation of this system of unemployment relief is that the enlistment in i he services of the Army and Navy is now of a much more voluntary character. It will, therefore, be necessary to offer greater inducements to those whom it is sought to attract into the rank and file of the Army and the lower deck ratings of the Navy. Possibly greater opportunities to rise from the ranks would attract a more intelligent class of recruit. At one time it was possible to carry on an army with the rejected of the labour market, but with increasing specialisation and mechanisation it is desirable that men of initiative and more than average in. telligence shall be available to fight the Empire’s battles of the future.