AID TO RECRUITING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 143, 20 June 1939, Page 8

AID TO RECRUITING

THOSE ALREADY IN RANKS CAN HELP NAPIER'S EXAMPLE QUOTED Addressing a public meeting in the Wanganui City Council last night, the Officer Commanding the Central Military District, Colonel E. Puttick, D. 5.0., said that the territorial force in Wanganui at present stood at a strength of 178. A total of 195 more was required to bring the strength up to 373. “The question is, will we get them?” Colonel Puttick asked. “I do not know. In my military district, which, as you probably know, is the lower half of the North Island, 1 want 1522, without mentioning bandsmen. Personally, J think we will go veryclose to getting them. Whether we will get them in the right places is hard to say. We would like them in centres where they can be most conveniently trained, “It is up- to Wanganui Io provide those men,” Colonel Puttick said. “In Napier the Returned Soldiers’ Association opened a recruiting office, an empty shop, and got 50 recruits in a week. Is Napier bigger than Wanganui?” A voice: It is not nearly as big. Colonel Puttick: Yet it is bigger than Wanganui in this. If Napier can get 50 recruits in a week, there jis no reason why Wanganui cannot beat that.

No Question of a Race “This recruiting is not a. question of • a race, though it. may seem like I that,” Colonel Puttick declared. “We j do not. want just numbers of men. There is no use me waving a flag at army headquarters and saying I have 5000 men and some other district hasn’t got anything like that number. The men we want, must be average New Zealanders, of average New Zealand physique and mentality. We do not want supermen, though it will be all right if they come along. We want men who are prepared to honour the solemn promise to give three years to training. “A man should not enter a thing

like this thoughtlessly,” Colonel Puttick declared, adding that during the lean years the army, losing about a thousand a year as the period of training of the men ended, had recruited men and, kept the force going. If that could be dene when recruiting was in the doldrums, surely something better could be done now. The Best Agents “The question is, how are we to get these men?” he asked. “1 do not know any one answer to that, but 1 think it is a matter, firstly, for the men in the ranks to-day to bring in with them lhe men they would rather have beside them. If "»ar came it might mean two people, like the Mayor and myself, for instance, finding ourselves alongside one another. It. would then matter very much to both of us as to just what the calibre of the other chap was. The best recruiting agents are the men in the ranks themselves. There are some 12,000 of them about New Zealand and if they each brought in one man you would have more than your answer. If those in Wanganui each brought in one man you would just about get ycur answer.”