Canberra, Mar. 25.
The Prime Minister, Mr. R. G. Menzies, has announced that the War Cabinet had decided:
1. To recruit for service abroad another division of the Second ALF. (the Seventh Divisior) and also 16,000 additional troops necessary to make up an army corps. Including the troops already enlisted, and the necessary reinforcements, it is proposed to raise a grand total of 90,000 men for the Second ALF. by June, 1941.
2. To attach an army ce-operation squadron of the RAAF, to the Second ALF. The squadron will be provided with aircraft from overseas.
3. To raise and send abroad one railway survey company—three railway construction companies and two forestry companies, totalling—40 officers and 1,203 other ranks. These men will be recruited from skilled workers in Australia and will require very little preliminary training.
Mr. Menzies also announced that either one or two new age quotas would be called up for compulsory training in the militia, and that militiamen receiving camp training this year would be called up for short refresher courses next financial year.
The campaign has been bitterly fought by both sides, Mr. Robert J. Manion, leader of the Conservative opposition, has stated that Mr. Mackenzie-King was "unfit to remain Prime Minister of this country" and that his war efforts have been "deplorable and farcical." Mr. Manion has based his platform on a demand for a national Government made up of the "very best brains" in the cluding business leaders cians, regardless of their party affiliations. Mr. Mackenzie-King's platform has been that as his ministry represents every section of Canada, it is a "national" government. He has also cautioned against the advisability of "changing horses in the middle of the stream" and placing such heavy responsibility in the hands of men untried in public life, Mr. Mackenzie-King has been Prime Minister of Canada three times and has spent a total of 14 years as chief executive of the nation.
"Mr. Manion, although he has been active in federal politics intermittently since 1917, is in comparison a newcomer to public life. He has only been leader of the Conservative Party for slightly more than a year.—United Press, Several persons were arrested after dynamiting a railway bridge near Londonderry. Belfast police fired shots in dispersing a crowd of Nationalists.—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.