There is another consideration. The strain upon the medical profession
has been great already. We are very short of medical men, and we may be
driven to do it by the hard necessities of the case.
I now turn to the new proposal embodied in the bill, which I beg leave
to introduce today. Our first proposal is to raise the military age up
to 50, and in certain specified cases we ask for powers to raise it to
55, but that only when a man with special qualifications is needed.
For instance, it may be necessary to do it, in the case of medical men,
in order to secure their services. It may be necessary in certain
special classes, with special training and special experience, to secure
their services for the army. When you come to the question of raising
the age to 50, it does not mean that men between 42 and 50 are
necessarily to be taken in order to put them into the fighting line. It
may be that there are men of that age who are just as fit as men of 25,
but I am sorry to say that that is the exception, and we cannot,
therefore, depend upon men of that age altogether to make the finest
fighting material.
There are a good many services in the army which do not require the very
best physical material, and it would be very helpful to get men of this
age to fill those services, in order to release younger and fitter men
to enter the fighting line. There is also to be borne in mind the fact
that we have to prepare for our home defense, so as to be able to
release men from this country and fill their places by men between 42
and 50, who, I have no doubt, would fight very tenaciously for their own
homes if there were an invasion.
The proportion of men from 42 to 50 years of age whom we expect to be
available is not very high--something like 7 per cent. That is only 7
per cent. of men from 42 to 50 will be available for the army.
I only want to reassure people between 42 and 50 that all the men of
that age are not going to be called up to the fighting line. I gave a
sort of rough estimate that it would be only a small percentage of men
of this age who would be likely to come under the provisions of the
bill.
[The Premier then took up the system of exemptions, which is revised in
the bill. He explained that the King, under the provisions of the bill,
could cancel former exemptions, and that men would be exempted on
medical grounds only, with provisions also for speeding up the procedure
of appeal tribunals. He continued:]
We have to choose between either submitting to defeat or taking the
necessary measures to avert it. We will never submit to accepting
defeat.
I need hardly say that this provision will not be used to set aside the
pledges given to discharged soldiers. They will be carefully observed.