Before the debate closed there was an interesting discussion in
regard to tho ago of service, Mr. Williams wishing to sub- stitute twenty-one for eighteen years as the age at which liability to serve should begin. As Mr. Bonar Law pointed out, no one will be called up under the Bill till nineteen. For ourselves, what we regret in the Bill is that it did not allow attestation t) begin at seventeen and service at eighteen. Some very inter- esting evidence was given that, as far as Flanders was concerned, boys of eighteen do much better than men between thirty and f )rty years of age. Colonel Page Croft stated that, after an experience of thirteen months in the trenches, he found that the young men between eighteen and twenty-three got through the best. Captain Newman supported this by declaring that he had not yet seen a young man in his company fall out
Previous page
