§ 106. Mr. DOUGLAS HALLasked the Under-Secretary for War whether he is aware that numbers of members of the National Reserve who have since joined the Colours were unaware before the War that it was necessary to sign an obligation to serve during a period of imminent national peril in order to earn the Government gratuity or through inadvertence neglected to do so; and whether, in view of these facts, and also because the men who join or have joined the Colours since the War have done so with a full knowledge of the risk they run, while many who undertook to join before did so without anticipating that a great emergency would arise, he can see his way to treat all those persons who were members of the National Reserve before the War and have since joined the Colours alike in the matter of gratuities on enlistment?
Mr. BAKERThese payments were made in consideration of the men having undertaken beforehand certain definite obligations, and cannot be extended to those who did not undertake them.