The New Zealand Parliament adopted conscription for service overseas last
July by overwhelming majorities, and the Act is sow being enforced. A correspondent of the Times, writing from Wellington on December 7th, says that the experiment promises well. Voluntary enlistment continues, but if the quota for any district is not reached by a fixed date in each month, the deficiency is made up by a compulsory ballot in that district. The first ballots were taken on November 16th-18th. Four of the twenty- one districts had recruited their desired number of volunteers for two drafts of four thousand five hundred men. From the men of military age in the remaining seventeen districts four thousand were selected by ballot to •supply the thirteen hundred and sixty-nice recruits still needed. Liberal provision is thus made for the unfit and for those exempted on appeal to the Military Service Boards. There was some unrest among the miners, in- fluenced in part by the defeat of tha National Service Referendum in -Australia, although miners as a class were apparently to be exempted from military service by the Minister of Munitions. But the men at one pit who went so far as to strike returned to work in a few days.
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