UNIVERSAL MILITARY SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 170, 17 January 1914, Page 4

UNIVERSAL MILITARY SERVICE.

Speaking recently in London Earl Per,cy dealt with universal military service and told his hearers that it would be well to remember the odds which existed against France. Germany had half a million more men than France in the field. Also, the outflanking movement, so much favored by German tacticians, had always been successful when it was employed, notably iby Bulgaria against Turkey. Turkey look only 20 per cent- of her eligible young men each year to servo in her army, and her population was increasing at the rate of a (million per annum. France, on the other .hand, took Ku per cent, of her young men. It must lie remembered, too, that the decisive moment In any war had never been reached on the sea. The struggle with Napoleon went on for ten years after we bad won the. kittle of Trafalgar. It was necessary, in the event of war, that a decisive victory should be achieved by Britain's army as well a.s 'by her navy; that she should have an army capable of supporting her allies. At the present moment Britain was supreme nowhere on the sea; she kept a, slight superiority only in the North Sea: Germany having already twenty-nine (battleships there to England's twenty-nine, while only eight extra ships were at Gibraltar, four mid a-half days' journey distant. What would probably .happen was that Germany would send HM.flftl) men to English shores at the very beginning of a war, thus preventing sending a force to the aid of her allies at all. The decision would he fought out On the Continent, where England Could take no part in it. The real solution of the problem lay in tho formation of an efficient army' for service on the Continent. This could ibe raised not by conscription, 'hut by universal service on the Continental model. Tt might be found difficult, even impossible, to do that, font if Britain failed to do what was necessary it would he sinning against the light. Earl Percy eviilently takes a pessimistic view of the, position and desires to go even as far as Lord Roberts in providing national defc'iicc.