Exemption for Preference.
Page 4
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
After-the-Peace Rush Predicted for Occupations which Offer Immunity from Compulsory Military Service.
By "The Inspector."
It is questionable if more than a few men in every ten thousand really. want to be soldiers. We get our armies of millions jointly from those who make the best of it because of the national need and from those who neglect no opportunity to get out of it if they can. Added to these are the relatively few with the sporting love of adventure or the actual fighting instinct born in them. In the aggregate they are a marvellous lot and most philosophic. When I write of dislike for military service, I ara thinking of the real fighting arms, naval and military., and, of course, not of the many auxiliary branches, which, while conferring the right to wear a uniform, involve the wearer in no more risk and in little, if any more discomfort than is run by the war-time civilian. Natural distaste for risking life and limb must be common in all civilized nationalities ; whether Hundom should be included is, of course, a moot point.
No one can blame the man who, as luck will have it, happening to be possessed of some special talent or training, avoids the responsibility of military service by the exercise, in the national interest; of such particular capabilities. Nor can he fairly be censured if he finds satisfaction in the facts that chance not only ensures his personal safety, but that he can manage very often to make a very fair thing out of it financially. We might go a stage further and realize that the temptation to scramble into some occupation, in or out of uniform, which will ensure relative immunity from risk, is not an unnatural one to a man NOM is not fired with the possibility of discovering a marshal's baton in his haversack. Goodness only knows there has been evidence enough of such efforts in this country where we had no previous national soldiering tradition to fortify us, except in a family sense.
This particular war, in which the whole world is gradually and surely becoming involved, is radically different from any other in respect of its technical necessity. For the first time in the history of this battie-scarred old globe, we find half the populations fighting and dying in the trenches, and the other half, or perhaps, including the women, more than half, producing the means to maintain them there. Those who are doing nothing for the national cause, here and elsewhere, unless they be aged, invalid, insane, or in jail, are becoming a more and more negligible quantity. These characteristics, viewed broadly, lead to some remarkable conclusions. Few of us can say if, when this slaughter is finished and the newspaper, columns are being boiled down by the historian to precis form, the several combatant nations will be forced to retain great standing 'armies, or if, a universal disarmament will prove something more than an idealist's dream, a counsel of perfection. Personally, I can only conceive the law as utterly powerless without the policeman to enforce it. Our present .enemy's utter disregard for international obligations ,-if they never be brought to a more enlightened frame of mind, will most certainly necessitate stronger international policy than ever before. It will be a difficult thing to send what is left of Germany to a reformatory, and were it possible, I gravely doubt the utility of such a course. What's bred in the blood comes out in the Hun. It's a bad strain, and unless it can be eliminated in future, other nations will always have to take the precaution of going to bed with revolvers under their pillows.
• It would appear, then, as if the world is not unlikely to have to continue to remain armed, if for no other reason than that the best prevention of war re. mains preparedness for it. We may, therefore, in al' probability, have to face a conscripted future, or, it any case, a military-trained one. The new raechanica: conditions of warfare suggest the extraordinary effeei, that may ensue as the result of the possibility of deliberately choosing to avoid military service by start iog business life as a fitter rather than as a fish monger. If there be a choice, who can doubt its direction I All may have to submit to military training, but many will be exempt in future as at present. 1E not the result likely to be that the next generation will stick to the machine shop, and particularly to the motor industry, or to some of the many other occupations which this war has revealed as nationally necessary when the bugle blows. Technical warfare will most certainly tend to becokne intensified. The proportion of exemptions may well have to be higher in future struggles. It may take two men at home to keep one man in the field. Is it not, therefore, probable that peace-time. occupations offering wartime immunity for us will be flooded with applicants for inclusion. The effect this may very well have on the many industries concerned it is difficult to gauge ; it certainly will not encourage the back-to-the-land movement—unless the agriculture be classed high enough. Taken in conjunction, so far as our own industry is concerned, with the vastly-inflated personnel of the Army and Navy's mechanical transport establishment, with their low rate of wastage, and the fact that the motor vehicle industry is already being looked to for future employment by thousands who first knew anything of it when they joined up, the resultant problem is at least a puziling one for many of us. Its solution will not be rendered easier by present occupation of hundreds of thousands of women as factory .hands, drivers, conductors—and most other things just now. They will not all be easily displaced. The motor industry bids fair to be a very popular one with the rising generation, as will all branches of mechanical engineering. Perhaps it bodes well for the reconstruciion period which will last many years. But I can foresee many more candidates at the factory gates than at the grocer's counter. And the comparative certainty of military exemption offered will not be the smallest factor in a difficult situation.