CASE FOR CONSCRIPTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1939, Page 2

CASE FOR CONSCRIPTION

GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMITMENTS. Countries which enter into farreaching commitments abroad. as Britain has done with the general consent of its people, must possess the means to honour the commitments if called on. says the "Spectator." That is the case for the measure of conscription recently adopted. Conscription is alien to the spirit and tradition of Britain, but the place it holds in the life of countries like France and Switzerland. Holland and Denmark, disposes of any idea that it is undemocratic. So far as it involves compulsion it limits individual freedom, as well as being gravely uneconomic, and except in circumstances that make its adoption imperative, a country is happy that can avoid recourse to it. whatever be its value as an instrument of discipline and morale. Mr Chamberlain clearly took that view when he limited the application of the measure to a period of three years, with the provision that it might be rescinded even before that if international conditions warranted. Conscription is not being adopted as a permanent feature of the national life. The merit claimed, and on the whole justly, for the new measure is that it is better calculated than any other demonstration that could be given to reassure friends in Europe and to impress potential foes. That is a matter of capital importance; it may turn the scale between war and peace; and the Prime Minister did well to insist that this, like every military measure Great Britain is taking today, is being taken with the aim first and foremost of averting war, and only secondly of achieving victory if war comes. -