National Work or the Army ?
Experience has revealed the necessity of making many changes in the Schedule of Reserved Occupations and the ages at which men are to be reserved. The alterations that have now been made are designed not merely to prevent workers from sheltering from military service but to get men into the essential jobs. The most essential civilian jobs are in munitions industries, agriculture and mining ; and one reason for raising the reserved age for carpenters and meal-workers from 25 to 3o is that it will take some of the former into the aircraft industry and some of the latter into munitions works. Again, if many of the surface mineworkers are drawn into mining underground their jobs on the surface may be taken by unemployed men whom long idleness has made unfit for harder work. Among " black-coated " workers it is found that there are many whose reservation is quite unjustifiable. The Government is right in refusing to release for military service trained Civil Servants upon whose knowledge of administration so much depends. But it is equally right in raising from 25 to 3o the age of reservation for temporary Civil Servants and local authority employees. Most of the able young men who have joined as temporary Civil Servants have done so with a view to being of use, and would not wish their zeal to be mistaken for desire to evade military service. The case for exempting them would only arise if there were a shortage of men and women suitable for the tem- porary Civil Service comparable to the shortage of men fitted for agricultural work. That point has not been reached, nor will it be till qualified women have been absorbed in larger numbers.
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