If as Havas reports the British Cabinet may take a decision on the subject of conscription for Great Britain, some time this week, it will be because the Government is being gently forced in this direction not only by the very manifest desires of France herself, but also because of the fact that imposing as Britain's preparations against war have been, there is still a number of European Powers which see strength in terms of man power on land, and are consequently not particularly impressed with might in other spheres. When Mr. Neville Chamberlain succeeded Mr. Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister he was heir to the pledge that the latter gave that the Nationalist Government would not introduce conscription in times of peace. It was that pledge which it is claimed, and particularly by the Opposition, —which fears the use of a conscript army in trade disputes,—was largely responsible for the big victory which the Nationalist Government secured at the polls, and Mr. Chamberlain, good business man that he is, realizes the importance of adhering to that undertaking so long as it is humanly possible. The response to the appeal for voluntary recruitment for the purpose of doubling the Territorial Army has not been disappointing, it is well up to, if not above normal recruiting figures, but the proponents of conscription point out with considerable justification that that rate is too slow when the urgencies of the situation are given the fullest consideration, that what is required at the present moment is that Great Britain should have at its disposal the strongest possible striking force capable of being sent anywhere in Europe to.the assistance of those who may sooner or later find themselves in the mutual anti-aggression pact towards which Great Britain is steadily working with by no means slight success. Nations like Rumania, Poland and Greece are more likely to be impressed with military than by naval strength; the same may be true also of Russia, for any nation which holds to the doctrine that it is the bayonet which eventually decides wars, will, while acknowledging the value of navies and air fleets, still contend that the man who can enter into occupation is the one who ultimately sets the seal upon victory.
At the commencement of the Great War in 1914 the total strength of the British Army in all theatres of war amounted to 24,896 officers and 708,618 other ranks. Those numbers were swelled by the system of voluntary recruiting and ultimately Earl Derby's scheme, but actual experience proved that neither of these systems led to the formation of armies large enough to have that immediate effect in hostilities which was so eminently desirable. In November, 1918, the army figures showed a total of 193,102 officers and 4,755,242 other ranks under arms, though other authorities show that the total number of men raised for military service during the war amounted to 5,704,000. In view of the strength of the German army 1914, the throwing of 100,000 British on to the continent, an ar which is stated it aroused the risible faculties of their enemies, would have been regarded as nothing but a gesture had it not been for the manner in which the "Old Contemptibles" acquitted themselves, and made their own very definite impress on the future development of the war. The despatch of 340,000 contemplated under the present Army scheme in the event of war would be somewhat slightly more impressive, but when the numbers are compared with those which eventually had to be employed in the last War—something in the nature of one-fourteenth—it must be realized that this would not be the effective contribution which Great Britain should be called upon to make to the common can Except for the purposes of numerical comparison it is useless to think in terms of 1914-1918. With the development of the aerial arm, and the swift moving tank, an entirely new tempo has been set for war There will be but the slightest of margins in which to repair mistakes in forethought, probably none indeed to make good errors in strategy, and it may very well prove that a nation which has not a great army in being at the outbreak of hostilities may never have the opportunity of ree have no opportunity wi able in a comparatively short time to control of the air, something upon which the outcome of the next war may in the end be found completely to have depended.
In the course of a recruiting speech at Bermonsey, on March 31, Mr. Here-Belisha, Minister for War, appealed for 250,000 men, offering them nothing "except the knowledge that they may be ready to preserve this country and uphold at a sharp moment the principles of uprightness and liberty." There is not the slighted doubt that he will get them. But will he get them quickly enough And if he does, will the number then be sufficient? The history of 1914-1918 suggests that they will not, that the British nation must be made to think of its army in terms of millions, and not of hundreds of thousands The question next arises is whether Mr. Chamberlain should abandon the pledge which has come to him as an uncomfortable legacy. To do so would be attended with the grave danger of splitting the country from top to bottom unless the Opposition, and more particularly the Labour and Socialist sections are given the satisfaction of seeing compulsory mobilization including all branches of a nation's activities. For that view there must also be found some degree of support. Whether the average Briton likes it or no, the fact is that at least two of the nations with whom she may be called upon to fight have even now mobilized all their national resources, and that capital, just as much as man-power is at the command of the State, one which she may find on her side as also done the same thing, and the sooner Britons realize that when the nation is at war all of them are, the earlier will come recognition of the fact that only by the speediest of preparations on all fronts can the system of defence arrive at anything approaching perfection. Naturally the next question to be asked is whether Mr. Chamberlain should go to the country on the issue of conscription. That it would be somewhat of a gamble is probable, but it is just as equally likely that the nation would give him the mandate which so many of his supporters desire, but there again there is the issue of time to be taken into consideration. A general election, and, on assembly of Parliament, the passage of the necessary legislation, more particularly if as a result of the polls the Opposition were strengthened, would mean that many precious months would be lost before conscription could be got under way, and a month is much too long a period of time nowadays to permit of liberties being taken with numbers of it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.