Second Division called up

Behind the lines on the Meuse. French troops set up these beehives to secure a stock of honey to...
Behind the lines on the Meuse. French troops set up these beehives to secure a stock of honey to supplement their scanty sugar supply. - Otago Witness, 7.11.1917
The publication this morning of the first list of members of the Second Division of reservists, who have been called up under the provisions of the Military Service Act, must remind the community very pointedly of the serious effect which the war is having on the business and family life of New Zealand.

It will probably furnish a fresh text for those people in our midst who argue that we have done enough. The argument is one which derives some plausibility from the fact that Canada has not yet put into force the Conscription Act, and that Australia, where voluntary enlistment has dismally failed, has so far refused to introduce conscription. The conclusion must, we think, be accepted, however, that no British community has done enough until it has done all that is in its power or until it is relieved from the obligation of doing more by the acceptance of its burden by other nations that are more favourably situated than it is and better able, from the magnitude of their resources and from their closeness to the war theatres, to supply troops and to transfer them swiftly and economically to the battle front. The first draft of members of the Second Division will not enter camp until March next, and in the ordinary course of events will, it may be assumed, not complete its training in New Zealand, until the July following, - that is to say, until eight months from now. A great deal will happen in that time, and there may even be some ground for the hope, difficult though it may be at present to discern any, that there may eventually be no need to despatch members of the Second Division from New Zealand at all.

Fitness questioned

A Dunedin soldier, who was ``gassed'' in France and is now in hospital in England, in a letter to a friend states:- ``By the way, I don't know what our Government is thinking about sending some of the men that are coming in the later reinforcements. Mind you, I am not speaking of them as a whole, as they are up to standard, but there are some old men - perhaps in some cases old before their time - and others with different complaints who will probably never leave England except in an hospital boat back to New Zealand. Yet the Government has to go to the expense of training, equipping, and transporting these men to England, each man costing I suppose by the time he is landed here pretty near a `century'.''

Girls smoking

``The proposal to prevent excessive smoking by young girls, made in Parliament by Mr Jacobson, will have the approval of the medical profession,`` writes a doctor in a London paper. ``I would not condemn an occasional cigarette or even from one to three daily for a full-grown woman, but if a girl begins on a small scale in her teens she is more likely than a man to smoke too much in the course of time. Tobacco is a powerful drug, and once a girl has taken a few soothing doses of it she becomes a slave to the habit. Soon her digestion becomes disordered. This makes the blood impure, and this in turn ruins her complexion. Her growth is more or less hindered by the tobacco poison, her nervous system depressed, and her heart weakened. Wrinkles come on prematurely in the case of the confirmed woman smoker.'' - ODT, 7.11.1917.

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