With over 220,000 men of the age of twenty years registering for military training for six months on Saturday the first phase of the application of conscription will have been passed. On June 15, it is expected that the first batch to receive training will receive their calling-up notices, after which it is believed they will go to camp on July 1. At present it is thus that they will be housed, but it is planned by the Government to erect the necessary barracks, etc, with all possible speed. This change over from voluntary to compulsory-service, modified as it is, is in the nature of a very large undertaking, when it is remembered that equipment, etc., has to be prepared for this large body of soldiers, and also the great numbers which joined the Territorial Army in the period of grace which was allowed. Great Britain will, comparatively shortly, be in position to despatch a force of 500,000 men to the Continent in the event of war, and in the course of the next three years, the present anticipated duration of the present conscription measure, will have no "fewer than one million men at her disposal, Much of the opposition to the Act disappeared with the assurance given by Mr, Neville Chamberlain that the new army would not be used for such things as strike breaking, though some Labour opposition still exists on the score that the Government has not compiled measures to conscript wealth in the time of war. The answer to that is that the methods of taxation employed by the Government, and the system of controlling profiteering make it certain that wealth will be obliged to do its share in the defence of the Empire, while it is to be expected that, should further measures be deemed necessary in times of war, any Government in power would have sufficient Parliamentary strength behind it to put through whatever additional legislation was considered imperative.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.