Britain Argues Draft Term

...Attlee said at Margate, conscription is a very wasteful way of providing operational troops...

...But they still demand a number of troops which no country can provide without conscription...

...Strategic Air Command responsible solely to the American President...

...So far, all the efforts and expenditure of the Allied peoples have failed to achieve this purpose...

...Indeed, when Eden announced the retention of the two-year period, he also admitted for the first time that Britain is planning to provide only two reserve divisions as against the twelve originally foreseen...

...But the question now arises whether even this will suffice unless more is done to maintain existing strength...

...yet the instrument of atomic retaliation is not itself under NATO's orders--it is the U.S...

...In the case of infantrymen, this is normally about eight months, so that they can serve for 16 months on operational duties before release...

...The brute fact is that, so long as the conscript is necessary at all to reinforce the supply of regular soldiers, his value increases rapidly with his period of service...

...But though the case for reserves has lost force, conscription has meanwhile become indispensable as a means of supplying Britain's current needs for operational troops...

...Worse still, a large proportion of regular soldiers are in fact young men who, when called up for national service, preferred to double their pay at the cost of an extra year's service by signing on for a three-year engagement as regular soldiers...

...That it has not done so already is probably due less to purely military considerations than to the fear that a cut in the period of conscription would start a chain reaction among Britain's European allies, even though none of them at present have so long a period as Britain...

...But a tank sergeant, and other skilled NCOs, may require 18 months training: Unless the period of service is at least two years, they can make little contribution...

...General Gruenther has often stated the conditions without which he cannot fulfil his defensive role--the use by SHAPE of atomic weapons and the addition of 12 German divisions to his existing forces...

...It is a tribute to the greater realism of American thinking that the same argument is less popular in the U.S...

...The Labor party has attacked this decision as dodging the issue and creating more problems than it solves...

...Unfortunately, the shortage of regular soldiers is worse among experienced NCOs...

...The security of Europe still depends on the assumption that a full-scale Soviet attack would be met by atomic bombardment of Russian cities...

...For six years now, the military purpose of the Atlantic alliance has been to provide an international army on the continent of Europe strong enough to halt a full-scale offensive by the Red Army...

...Since then, the assumption that any major European war would involve large-scale nuclear bombing of communications has made nonsense of that argument for conscription...

...In fact, Britain, America and Canada are the only members of NATO to have provided their full share of efficient fighting forces for Europe's Central Front...

...And this demand will be strengthened by the argument that ground forces are unnecessary anyway during the Great Thaw if the thermonuclear deterrent has proved sufficient even during the most dangerous periods of the Cold War...

...The shortage of regular soldiers has to be made good by conscripts who have finished their training...

...So there will be mounting pressure on the Government to go further...

...For years, parents and employers have been begging the Government to reduce the two-year period of conscription which the Labor Government introduced just after the outbreak of the Korean War...

...Neither of the two political parties has felt it possible to introduce selective service, either by ballot or by the exemption of further occupations, though in opposition Churchill used to argue the case for it...

...Though pay and conditions compare more favorably than ever before with those of civilian life, soldiering is still an uncomfortable and dangerous business--particularly for the family man...

...Far too high a proportion of regular NCOs are engaged in training national servicemen rather than operational duties...

...As intoxication with the Geneva Spirit proceeds, it is inevitable that the peoples of these three countries will ask more and more insistently why they should make such sacrifices to defend allies who have failed to meet their commitments...

...Indeed, there is here a vicious circle...

...Instead of reducing the period or exempting further groups of men from service, he will call up men more slowly so that the age of intake rises from 18 to 19 by the end of 1957...

...In Britain, members of all parties have recently argued for the total abolition of conscription on these grounds...

...But a cut in the period of conscription would leave the same training demands on regular NCOs while robbing the regular army of conscript NCOs who had finished their training...

...Neither parents nor employers will gain by this change--on the contrary...

...Exclusive reliance on the thermonuclear deterrent means that Europe would be both occupied by the Red Army and bombed by the SAC if war should come...

...And, unfortunately, the value of a conscripted soldier is in mathematical proportion to the amount of time he serves...

...In fact, while meeting military needs, it does nothing to satisfy the demands of industry and party politics...

...If, on the other hand, Europe takes her fair share in the task of producing ground defenses along the frontier of the Soviet Empire, not only does war become infinitely less likely, but, should war some, there will be much more chance of ending it without either Communist occupation of Western Europe or the indiscriminate bombing of cities...

...As Mr...

...And it is feared that the point may already have been reached, as with miners, where no further improvement in pay will bring a significant increase in regular servicemen...

...Tactical atomic weapons for the first time offer Europe the possibility of effective ground defense without a crippling expenditure of military manpower...

...And whether the deterrent succeeds in preventing war will depend on America's readiness to incur the destruction of her own cities in order to prevent marginal advances by the Red Army in territory more than 3.000 miles from New York...

...When the Labor Government first raised the period to two years, the main purpose of conscription was to provide trained reserves who in case of war could rapidly reinforce British troops already on the continent of Europe...

...The growing shortage of first-class regular soldiers imposes still heavier burdens on those who remain...

...Thus a cut in the number of conscripts would ease the NCO problem...

...At the moment, half the French Army is tied down in North Africa, and there is no sign that this depletion of France's NATO contribution will be made good...

...but it would be even more wasteful if the period of service were shorter...

...Its annual conference at Margate rejected by almost five million votes to 1.3 million a motion calling for the total abolition of national service, but unanimously accepted another which called for an immediate reduction in the period and for an independent inquiry into the conditions of national service...

...So the Government has done the next best thing by slowing down the rate of the call-up from four to three intakes a year, at the cost of prolonging the period of disturbance in a young man's life...

...But however powerful the arguments against a complete reliance on the thermonuclear deterrent, they must collapse if Europe fails to provide the forces required for the alternative policy of graduated deterrence or measured retaliation...

...As troops were released from Trieste, Austria, Suez and Korea, new troops were needed in Malaya, Kenya and now Cyprus...

...The Continental members of NATO must therefore face, before it is too late, what the alternatives present for them...

...Moreover, the regular core of Britain's Army has been steadily diminishing...

...Many, if not most, of these "regulars" would be lost if the period of conscription were cut...

...But this raises still more fundamental problems of foreign policy and global strategy...

...The problem is immensely difficult, and has completely changed its nature in the last few years...

...Admitting that a proportion of conscripts may at present waste some of their time in the Army, it has urged some form of selective service which would meet its specific needs for certain types of soldier without compelling less necessary men to mark time simply for the sake of uniformity...

...One regular battalion recently came home after serving in 19 different foreign stations since 1945...

...Britain's world-wide military commitments have hardly diminished at all since Korea...

...as Russia builds up her atomic striking power...

...For this reason, the War Office, while prepared for a cut in the total intake of national servicemen, has always insisted that they serve for the full two years...

...Yet, though Britain alone in Western Europe maintains so long a period, Eden has decided despite the shift to nuclear weapons and the international detente that national service must remain at two years...