The Bill is not a particularly long measure, but it is most comprehensive, and may be expected to lead to a very full discussion. It provides in the first place that military service shall be compulsory on men between the ages of 20 and 45 for the period of the war.
No limit is to be set to the number of men that New Zealand is to send beyond the limit of capacity. The definition of men in the first class liable for service is single men without dependents, men who have been married but subsequently legally separated, and those men who have been married since the outbreak of war. It had previously been proposed that this should extend for a period of only six or eight months, but the Bill goes right back to the outbreak of war, and makes all such men liable for service in the first class. The other men - married and with families - are graded progressively.
About 40 returned soldiers met at Invercargill on Sunday afternoon for the purpose of forming a branch of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association. Sergeant-major Alsweiler was voted to the chair, and Mr P. McQuarrie, the delegate to the recent conference in Wellington, gave a resume of the work done at the conference, and referred to the proposal to form branches in various parts of New Zealand wherever there were sufficient returned soldiers to form one. There were already in New Zealand about 5000 returned soldiers, and the time would come when there would be 50,000 and more to be reckoned with. It was unanimously resolved to form a branch of the association. The following officers were elected: - President, Mr P. McQuarrie; secretary and treasurer, Mr D. Ritchie; and a committee of seven members.
Attention is drawn to the latest issue of the New Zealand Surveyor to one remarkably dry area in Central Otago, where the annual rainfall is under 20in. The area in question lies, roughly, midway between Oamaru and Queenstown, and contains about 2750 square miles, or 1,760,000 acres. The Surveyor says it is very remarkable that, while along the West Coast of the South Island, for a distance of over 300 miles, there exists a belt, about 40 miles wide, where the annual rainfall is over 100 inches; on the other side of the back-bone range, not more than a hundred miles distant, there is a large area where the annual rainfall is under 20 inches. - ODT, 17.5.1916.
