FILLING THE RANKS OF FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2697, 17 February 1916, Page 7

FILLING THE RANKS OF FRANCE

JOFFRE'S WAY TRAINING THE NEW DRAFTS (Special Correspondence of the New Yorli "Evening Post.") Paris, December 1. Parliament has voted that Government shall have authority to call out "the class of 1917" as soon after January 5 as the Government thinks best. How many times in the past year have we read in the nc«'s_ t* "itiusis of foreign papers that this c» •= af 1917 -had been called to aims aft a 'l hut been marched to the frovt\ Yt'liero followed tho usual comment viiat pranee was enrolling her last and ~». .ingest war reserves. And yet the young men of this wonderful class are a year older than they were when the news was launched—and they are not yet off to tho war. Nor are they likely to he for some months as now appears. For that matter, the older class of 1916 has not yet left barracks.

By tho class of 1917 is meant the young men able for military service who will bo twenty -years old in that year. So they will bo only one year earlier than their regular turn if they get to active- service next April, when all of them will be completing their nineteenth year. In our volunteer armies of the Civil War men of eighteen years were regularly accepted; and they would have been indignant; at being called boys. Even among. real boys <of ten or'twelve, I remember there was much excited talk of running away to be drummers. There was certainly now and then an enlistment at seventeen and even younger; and the French have always accepted volunteer enlistments from eighteen up to the regulation age of obligatory service at twenty.

Adequate Preparation First,

Vote of Parliament .and all, these nineteen-year-old men are not yet in active service, and foreign dispatches will very probably announce their call to arms several times more before they really see the front. Even the men of 1916, who are a spar older, will not really go to- the Iron? until these men of 1917 crowd them out of their present quarters. For, in France, men are not fished np, helter-skelter, here and there, and sent at a day's notice to fight in the ranks. Such men would be of little use, particularly in present warfare. Besides, the French Government, ever, since the law lias made military service compulsory oii every able-bodied twenty-year-old Frenchman, has acknowledged" its obligation .to the people not to put their sons at the hard work of national defence without proper preparation in body and mind. It is tho announcement of the different stages of this calling to arms n-hich usually gives occasion to premature foreign news. First, last summer the medical revision of th-j oiguteen-ycar-olds was ordered. This is necessary before the calling out of any class. The halt and deaf and near-sighted and "debile'' have to bo eliminated, according to their degree of debility. Some are "reformed" I pure and simply, that is, declared altogether unfit for any service In genI eral, the tuberculous are rejected, for no need of men would justify the exposing of the healthy 6ons of France to an interior enemy worse perhaps than tho foe they are to fight. . Some are sot down as good, in case of need, for sedentary positions; but these are now being filled with soldiers maimed in battle or .otherwise incapacitated for strenuous service. Yet others of these young men, who are examined.to know what they are fit to do, are put aside for "auxiliary" services in the rear, hospitals, clericnl posts, and so on. Guards in prison camps and for railway lines and other semi-active service are oftenest taken among the older reservists, whose age unfits them for the-hardships of the front.

The Other Extreme in Age. Another piece of news not representing facts, but appearing in the last week as it has done periodically for a year aud a half, is that France is calling 'to the front the other extreme, the classes of 1888 and 1887, that is, men .in their forty-eighth or forty-ninth year. In reality, these two classes were liable to active service at tho very beginning of war—and they nave not yot been called! Compulsory military service in France reaches from the age of twenty years to that of forty-soven. Now amah who was twenty in 1887 was just fortyseven in 1914, when war broke out. That year Government might call him at will; but a law was required to summon him to serve a year later. So the law was voted that the two • classes whose term was expiring should remain at the Government's disposition. This has doubtless been tho occasion for the recurrent news abroad that Franco is using these classes of her ultimately potential soldiers in her army—but it is not a fact. They might wdll be called for auxiliary service, and more than one of them has enlisted for the most activo sen-ice at tho front—but the Government has not yet called theni nor expressed its intention to do so. To go back to our class of 1917—it was just tho same for that of 1916— after the medical revision "had been completed, each man of the class received his little military book, which will bo his record of citizenship henceforth' and forever. It contains all the particulars of his name and birth and family—and the military post to which he Khali report when he is called to serve. This; the eighteen-year-olds, soon to be nineteen-year-olds, of the class of 1917, have duly received—and they are not yet called. What will happen to them when they are called, and what has been happening to their predecessors of the class of 1916 siuee September last, was explained by General Gallieni, the War Minister, when he asked Parliament this week to fix January 5 as the date when Government might call them —for the beginning of ■ their service—if it ■nishes. This is itself very different from being called to serve in active warfare at the front. Even those of 1916 are not there yet.

Comforting their Mothers. When first called ont, the young soldiers go to their depots. The General has promised that these shall regularly be the newest barracks; aawl these are certainly as comfortable as tho boys' boarding schools of my time, andthey are rather better off for fire in -winter. One of these future Benjamins of the French army wrote hot-headed to the papers to protest against all this babying of his kind on which Parliament was insisting. An editor—perhaps it was Gustavo Herve—tried to soothe him by saying—"All this winter* heat with flannels is not to warm you, but to comfort your mamma!'.'

From General JolFro down, under many difficulties and with wonderfully few failures, there has been this effort to lessen just as far as possible any waste of French lives. Four months are required to form the now soldier for safe in the Geld—and the Government pointed out that there could bo no question of tho class of 1917 going to the front before April nf rest year. Perhaps tlinv will be needed then for the final smashing offensive—which everyone hopes will come by that time—but Government did not say. It is then Kitchener says Bnglsnd will hive 4,.n0f!,n00 men under anas. France will have her

part and more, as she has had from the beginning. Tho first of the four months in barracks is needed almost entirely for hygiene and sanitation. Tho new men have' to be vaccinated for smallpox, and, more necessary still, against typhoid fevers of every kind. These soldiers have to be got 'into physical training, by progressive exercises more and more severe; and, with this, they have to be accustomed to open-air lives. AH this is not to be*done in a day. And then there is the military training proper—understanding of orders, which the French army describes quaintly aa "theory," tho execution of manoeuvres, as well as the use of guns and the care of barracks and baggage and the rest. It is true [ that, what are called the classes of military preparation—a sort of advanced Boys Scouts—have laid the way.