Cannon and Fodder

The British Government last week edged one short step forward to the adoption of the dread Continental system of universal conscription of men for military training. In the House of Commons Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced plans for another attempt to increase Britain's armed forces by voluntary enrollment. Although the Prime Minister said that "we have not by any means yet exhausted what can be done by voluntary service," the House and the nation had the impression the failure of this scheme (plus another Adolf Hitler coup) would probably mean full conscription at last.

The Government's new plan is to increase the strength of the forces of the field Territorials, the British citizen Army (much like the U. S. National Guard), from 130,000 to 340,000. Together with the regular Army, which is expected soon to reach 250,000, this will mean that Britain's land forces trained and equipped for Continental service will number some 600,000 men. Instead of 19 divisions that will be ready for immediate service in case of a war on the Continent, there will be 32. The anti-aircraft Territorials will be upped to 100,000 men and 10,000 will be on coast defense duty. Together with 150,000 men in the Navy and 118,000 in the Air Force, not to mention the 60,000 British troops in India and Burma, Britain's trained fighting men will be well nigh 1,200,000--quite a respectable figure for a non-conscript country.

France started the policy of conscription in 1798 in the aftermath of the Revolution. Oddly enough, it was the revolutionary cry of equality--even equality in the matter of dying for one's country--which replaced the professional soldier with the soldier drawn from public lists. Napoleon Bonaparte, "Son of the Revolution," believed that "God marches with the biggest battalions"; in 1813, at the zenith of his success, he commanded a conscripted army of 1,140,000 men. In the wake of Napoleonic conquests most countries of Europe adopted conscription until, in the World War, some 50,000,000 men were compulsorily drafted into service.

Protected by her insularity and guarded by a second-to-none Navy, Britain has long resisted conscription even in wartime. There were no drafts during the Napoleonic campaigns, the Crimean War or the Boer War. Only in 1916, nearly two years after the World War began, was the first British draft made.

Universal conscription had its genesis not only in the French Revolution but in the cheap rifle, which could be produced by the millions. With more expensive automatic rifles, machine guns, tanks and airplanes threatening to make the rifle obsolete, many a military theorist (and especially British theorists) has held that the days of large armies are over, that henceforth wars will again be fought by small groups of professionals trained especially to handle war's complicated machines. According to this theory, the draft would largely be confined to industrial workers conscripted to produce the machines. Until only a month ago Britain's idea of help to France in case of war was that of furnishing a few highly mechanized divisions and her Air Force.

But whatever theorists have said about small mechanized armies, the fact is that every country on the Continent (except Monaco, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein) has conscription and that, far from the armies becoming smaller, they have grown by divisions. Every time Britain started to make commitments on the Continent (such as that made years ago to France and last week to Poland), foreign military men were apt to ask embarrassing questions about the size of the British Army. France long ago let it be known that she was interested in getting British cannon fodder as well as British cannon. What Napoleon, Tsar Nicholas I and Boer General Christian De Wet all failed to force Britain to do, Adolf Hitler may yet accomplish.

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