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common action outside of our own country, when we may require in an emergency to send our own men and our own arms to another country for the purpose of common defence to fight an enemy. I would like very much to say that upon this question of the interchange of units and officers I hold a most pronounced opinion. Unlike my friend Mr. Deakin, I think that New Zealand could arrange for interchange of units. We have the Volunteer system there; we have for years had all the ordinary organizations referred to by Mr. Deakin in the matter of cadets and rifle ranges, and these are being excluded for private citizens all over the country. In connection with our Volunteer system, the only trouble we have is to keep the numbers down. All over our country we have the very best class of men offering to join our Volunteer corps. They are encouraged by men in every responsible position you can name in the country. Our captains of industry, our kings of commerce, the members of the Administration of the day, and the officials connected with our important State departments and the rank and file of these departments realise that it is upon the popular basis of a Volunteer system that we have to provide for the internal defence of our country, and in the event of trouble arising they are our source of internal defence, and we encourage it in every possible way. Now I have no doubt in my own mind that if there were —perhaps not in an extensive way in the first instance—an interchange of units of volunteers from both parts of the world, I do not say with the militia, because we have no militia in New Zealand, but if there was an interchange of units, as between the Old Country and ourselves, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that we would be able to get from time to time a body of men, not from any one particular part of the colony, but selected from various portions of it, with the instruction and the information upon detail so essential in times of trouble so that they may come back, and by permeating the country, so to speak, be able to inspire and infuse into others something of the enthusiasm you are trying to inspire in the Old World, and it brings about a feeling that the interchange of individuals amongst the rank and file tends certainly to a desire for unity and a desire for co-operation, and that that is not to be confined to the officers only. Mr. DEAKIN : What about their livelihoods ? Sir JOSEPH WARD : I was just going to touch upon that. For my part I should be prepared, and I am quite satisfied my colleagues would, to see that a Volunteer company coming to the Old Country for the purpose of the interchange of practice and ideas, should be paid reasonably to enable them to do so, and the same system might with advantage apply in England itself. We need not aim at doing it on an extensive scale, but my belief is that it would be worth trying with the idea of bringing about that mutuality expressed in these important papers. The desire voiced by the Secretary of State for War to-day to try to have co-operation for the purpose of defending the Empire in times of trouble or stress is well worth working for. Mr. DEAKIN : That does not put them back in their old employments; you pay them while they are away, but when they come home their places are taken by other men unless you make some extraordinary provision for it.

Fourth Day. M April 1907.

Military Defence. (Sir Joseph Ward.)