6 OCTOBER 1939, Page 19

REJECTED VOLUNTEERS

SIR, Whilst it is now clearly the time for the worries of the individual to be subjugated to those of the nation, I would beg, nevertheless, to bring to your notice the position of those members of the senior O.T.C.s who are not in posses- sion of Certificate A.

After a year's training, including two camps and culmi- nating in a final week's camp, devoted to passing the first half of the certificate preparatory to taking the final half in October, they returned, confident that in the case of national emergency their services would, at the least, be utilised. Instead, to their bitter disappointment, they have passed un- noticed, a situation which it is as difficult to understand as it has been to bear.

Each day at the Reception Units men who obtained their certificates years ago, and who have undergone no recent training, nor even seen a Bren gun, are accepted for the new Officer Producing Units whilst we, before the Joint Recruit- ing Board, are bluntly told to wait—a prospect that for us holds few illusions.

What, then, is to be our future, for sixteen different appli- cations confirm that the time is too far gone for enlistment in the ranks. Are we now to be left, rejected at Reception Unit and Recruiting Office alike, to endure the unmitigated agony of inactivity, until at last no doubt we shall know the privilege of the most bitter irony of all—a volunteer con-