The Government, therefore, has shortened the length of the calling up notice from fourteen days to seven and have authorized the sending of notice by whatever method is the most expeditious and convenient. It may be necessary even to curtail the rights of appeal on medical grounds, but for the moment it is not proposed to do so. We have had a good many frivolous appeals, which have wasted a good deal of time, and if that goes on, it will be absolutely necessary, in the interest of the security of the country, that the rights of appeal should be curtailed in this respect. Military Age Raised to 50 There is another consideration. The strain upon the medical profession has been great already. We are very short of medical men, and we may be driven to do it by the hard necessities of the case. I now turn to the new proposal embodied in the bill, which I beg leave to introduce today. Our first proposal is to raise the military age up to 50, and in certain specified cases we ask for powers to raise it to 55, but that only when a man with special qualifications is needed. For instance, it may be necessary to do it, in the case of medical men, in order to secure their services. It may be necessary in certain special classes, with special training and special experience, to secure their services for the army. When you come to the question of raising the age to 50, it does not mean that men between 42 and 50 are necessarily to be taken in order to put them into the fighting line. It may be that there are men of that age who are just as fit as men of 25, but I am sorry to say that that is the exception, and we cannot, therefore, depend upon men of that age altogether to make the finest fighting material. There are a good many services in the army which do not require the very best physical material, and it would be very helpful to get men of this age to fill those services, in order to release younger and fitter men to enter the fighting line. There is also to be borne in mind the fact that we have to prepare for our home defense, so as to be able to release men from this country and fill their places by men between 42 and 50, who, I have no doubt, would fight very tenaciously for their own homes if there were an invasion. The proportion of men from 42 to 50 years of age whom we expect to be available is not very high--something like 7 per cent. That is only 7 per cent. of men from 42 to 50 will be available for the army. I only want to reassure people between 42 and 50 that all the men of that age are not going to be called up to the fighting line. I gave a sort of rough estimate that it would be only a small percentage of men of this age who would be likely to come under the provisions of the bill.