THE MAN-POWER PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 126, 28 May 1918, Page 8

THE MAN-POWER PROBLEM.

GREAT BRITAIN'S NEEDS. CONSCRIPTION FOR THE MIDDLEAGED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 6. The brief respite on the Western front has come to an end, and once more the Huns have resumed their desperate effort to smash through the French and British lines at any cost. The issue is on the knees of the gods, but we in the Old Country are quietly confident that the enemy Trill not succeed, though we recognise very clearly indeed that the situation is fu.ll of peril, and most of us have ceased to place any particular faith in the assurances of those facile penmen who would have us helieve that the German effort is the gambler's last despairing throw, or thereabouts. They have told us this sort of thing before, many, many times, and have co oTten dwelt upon the "impossibility" of the enemy achieving certain thing*, only to be confounded by the achievement, that we at Home wish most heartily that they would divest themselves of the prophet's mantle once and for all, and content themselves with the mere recital of facts for which they can vouch. It is almost "as sure as fate" that if these war correspondents insist that the enemy cannot do a thing; he does it at the nfxt time of asking, or something very much like it. Looking back upon their writings during the past two or three years, it makes one smile grimly to see how very wide of the mark the "well-informed critics" of sucn and such a journal, and the "eminent military experts" have usually contrived to get in their estimates of the probabilities and poseibiJities of the war. The man-power of the enemy hae ever been —until lately—a favourite theme with them; also his "declining moral." Germany could not possibly do this, that, or the other, because she could not find the men, and she would not be able to do something else, because the "moral" of most of her warivorn battalions had declined to such a Joint that they were no longer to be rcied ; upon to face the terrVble slaughter in offensive would mean. And so on. But every time the Germane found the nen for whatever venture the High ™omman4 saw lit to make, even whilst she had to cope with the Russian menace, md now that Russia is to all intents and purposes no longer in the running, it is sheer folly to build any hopes upon the war coming to a speedy conclusion as a result of the enemy's terrible losses on She Western front "in the present offensive. There can, of course, be no question that his recent advance cost the Hun i-ery dearly, but our own losses were unioubtedly terribly heavy also. How many thousands of Britons fell to rise no more during the • terrible fighting oi March's declining daye we do not yel know nor do we know, except upon a German computation, how many of oui men were taken prisoners, but there c good reason to believe that the number did not fall very far short of the German estimate. Theje has not been any otiitial contradiction of the enemy's figures such as one might reasonably expect our War Office to issue if the enemy'e claims in this direction had anything '■'grotesque" about them. The severity of the enemy's losses is made much of by our correspondents at the front, and pro rata to the number of men engaged on each side they -were no doubt very con Biderably heavier than ours, but a* events have shown they were not so crippling to hie offensive powers as to compel the German High Command to call a halt for more than just such a space of time as would 'be necessary to enable them to bring into line fresh battalions to take the place of those exhausted by the ten days' constant fighting, and to bring his heavy artillery and supplies up over the ehell-torn and raineoaked ground won in hie advance. "Whatever Germany's man-power problem ie to-day, it is quite certain that our own is just as big. So much is shown by the fact that within the past few weeks the question of conscripting men up to 50 years of age has advanced out of the realms of "possibility" and right through the area of "probability" up to the doors of the House of Commons. It ie, indeed, confidently expected that ere the week is out a bill ■will be passed which will enable the Government to take any physically fit man up to the age of 50 for national service of some kind or other The percentage of .men between 42 and 50 who will be of any practical use in the fightingline will, of course, be very small indeed, and it is to be doubted whether the vast majority of them will be worth clothing in khaki for anything cave service requiring a minimum of physical exertion. But undoubtedly there are thousands who can well be spared from the work they are now doing, and who can capably perform quaei-military duties now being done by younger men of infinitely greater physical capabilities and absolutely fit Al men who are atill held in England performing military duties which entail no particular physical or mental strain. And there are still engaged in non-essential occupations, or upon war work requiring no particular skill, scores of thousands oi men under 40 years of age whom theii seniors could very efficiently replace They may not be Al men, but a large proportion of them could be made intc passably good soldiers under a judicious course of training. There is also ir the United Kingdom quite a deceni army of men who have been "invalided out" after a few months' service a 1 Home because they were not likely tc make efficient soldiers from a campaigr point of view, but -who are to-day eer tainly more fitted physically to perforir j garrison duty at Home than most men i of from 45 to 50 are ever likely to be. j whilst they already know the A.B.C. ol | a soldier's duties, and they can be much , better spared from the commercial life I of the country than men of riper experij ence. There is no sign of anything like a revolt of "the ancients" against the callup we are expecting to get in the neai ' future, but there is a very widespread i feeling among the 4o to 50's that the i present need for it is mainly the result ' of a sheer waste of man-power in the ' past, and which exists to-day. Our own : experiences assure us that waste con- ■ tinues. Take one small example of the ! way things are done in the Army. Two loads of manure were ordered by an allotment holder from a certan military ; centre not four miles away. They came | —two pair-horse vans with a ton oi I 25cwt. maybe in each, three men to each van, and a sergeant on horseback ill charge! Aβ an ordinary commercial transaction a pair-horse van and on( man would have been considered amplt to have "filled the bill." It is th« prospect of their physical and menta: powers being'frittered away in this sort of manner that appals the average citi i zen who ie expecting to be called upoi

presently to face the possibility of losing the results of years of work. He Tβcognises that this manure had to be shifted, and that its transference to an; allotment or a farm is all to the good | of the community, but he cannot see ■why the transaction from first to last could not have been carried out on business lines. It seems that even today the Army method is to send "a corporal and three men" to do a company's work in the field, and a battalion to <lo a company's work behind the lines. It has been stated in some quarters that the Government's main idea in introducing the up to 50 bill is to strengthen their hands for a very drastic "comb-out" of men under 32 in occupations which have hitherto enjoyed a certain amount of immunity from the operations of the National Service Act, and that, as a matter of fact, the chances of the majority of the men nonthreatened with conscription of being actually withdrawn from civil life are worth betting against, so to speak, no matter the medical category in which they may find themselves placed. It i 3. however, quite clear to even the optimistic student of the situation at the present time that ttreat Britain has reached the point at which she must rely almost entirely upon those ineligible for overseas service for home defence, and make available at the earliest possible time for service abroad every trained man who is not absolutely indispensable here, or whose physical condition renders it undesirable to subject him to the strain of campaign conditions. So those of us who have still to pass the fiftieth milestone, and are not physical wrecks, are not indulging in any great expectations of being able to escape through the meshee of the net the Government is now engaged in spreading, even though that process is going on r'ght in our eight.