There is the question of exemptions from service, for instance. Probably the framers of the regulations on this subject did not contemplate or anticipate the ingenuity that would be displayed by the great army of shirkers in taking advantage of these measures for their own questionable ends.
It must be galling for an officer of a company to know that a man exempted by virtue of a medical certificate from the one and a-half hours' drill per week is gaily playing football or cricket or indulging in foot racing or boxing or some other strenuous amusement, snugly sheltered behind a medical certificate of unfitness for military service.
This is what might almost be termed a common occurrence, and probably any company officer or sergeant-major whose work lies among the Territorials could give chapter and verse for many instances of a like nature.
Hints have been thrown out that the examining medical officers are not nearly as strict as they ought to be; but they have their hands tied also to a certain extent.
''To get an exemption,'' remarked an officer of the Defence Department, ''a man can apply to a magistrate, and if he can produce reasonable proof that attendance at drill, etc., imposes undue hardships upon him exemption may be granted.
Again, a man can apply to his commanding officer for a medical examination, and he is then sent to one of the military medical officers attached to the forces, who examines him, or is supposed to do so, and reports upon his fitness for service.
Generally, however, the shirker will go along to his `family physician' who, I think is rather too easily inclined to give the applicant a certificate showing that he is suffering from some disease or other incapacitating him from drill.
Armed with this, the shirker misses his parades, and sooner or later he gets hauled up before the magistrate.
He pleads illness, and flourishes his certificates, and the magistrate asks the defence department whether it will accept it. If the department says ''No'', then the magistrate tells the man to apply to the Defence Department and get an order on a military doctor for examination.
''The man does so, but when he goes up for examination he takes good care to tell the military doctor all about the private doctor's certificate and opinion, and it is found that the hard-and-fast rules of medical etiquette rarely, if ever, permit the military medical man to reverse the private practitioner's certificate of unfitness.
''The consequence is that in a very great number of cases the Defence Department, knowing the futility of doing otherwise, accepts the certificate presented in court.''
• Wellington: Sunday's earthquake seems to have been felt most severely on the eastern side of the city, many articles in private houses being shaken down, though no serious damage happened. Clocks stopped very generally, and the old destructor chimney swayed considerably.
In the Hutt Valley the shake was very pronounced, the ground moving in waves, according to some accounts. Mr G. Hogben, Inspector-general of Schools, informed a reporter that a premonitory tremor came at 11.33 a.m. and lasted three seconds; then came the sharp main shock, which lasted eight seconds, followed by vibrations and oscillations which extended over some 20 seconds.
- ODT, 10.2.1914.
