ARMY OF OCCUPATION.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 68, 20 March 1919, Page 7

ARMY OF OCCUPATION.

MAY REMAIN FOR TEN YEARS.

There are two questions that are being generally debated among soldiers just now—how long is an army of occupation to be kept in Germany, and how is the British contribution to that army to .be formed? (writes a soldier in "The Daily Express," London). Overseas the interest in these two problems is especially keen. Wh»n I left Belgium a few days ago the men were talking of little else. In every billet or inn, and even on the march into Germany—you heard men discussing how long the job would last now that the fighting was finished, wondering when they would be marching west instead of east, and when they would be free from military discipline, out of khaki, and at home.

There were widely different views. A good many (the innocent) thought that another six months would see them back in civil life. A few (with some influence), hoped to "pivot" out in a few weeks. But some (che more thoughtful), were saying something like this: "The war, as far as we're concerned, has only just started. The longest part is *o come. Germany, you sec, has got to pay. Till she has paid there will be an army of occupation—perhaps for ten years, perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty. • • ." Then the speaker would be stopped by shouts of indignation; but many would be left with an uncomfortable impression that there might be something in what he had said. CAST IRON MACHINE. I have asked several men how they would propose to form such an army— an army big enough to occupy not only part of Germany, but India, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia—to say nothing of the late Cerman colonies. They have cheerfully replied: "By volunteers." And when I have doubted (knowing, as I do, the state of mind of the average Tommy just now) whether enough volunteers would turn up, they have said quite as cheerfully, "Oh, well, in that case, of course, there would have to be some sort of conscription. Tlie men would have to be iorced. After all, they've been forced to fight. Why not force them to do garrison duty till Germany has paid up?"

And then, sitting in a complacent, crowded restaurant in London, I have thought of men inarching with full pack in rain and mud along those long, dreary roads into an unfriendly country, with no comfortable 'billets to look forward to at the end of the exhausting day (lucky, indeed, to find themselves in a dirty, rat-ridden barn), getting further everyday from any comforts or distractions they ever had, with nothing .to cheer them except that the fighting had finished, and that some day—Heaven knew when—they might find themselves free once more, free to live as they liked, and to be no longer part of a castiron pitiless machine.

But I could find no evidence anywhere (except among the wives of married soldiers overseas) of any recognition of the attitude of the average civilian soldier—the duration man—to the question of the occupation of Germany and of demobilisation generally. Some seemed entirely to have forgotten the army overseas. Nearly everyone seemed to think that the two armies of occupation were now having a picnic— having, in fact, a considerably better time, at the country's expense, "than the civilian at home. A few (the very serious), took the official view that it is a "privilege" for the troops to enter Germany—a privilege of which they should be proud. When a man gravely said that to mc, sipping his excellent port, I thought of what I had heard so many say in Belgium when marching towards the frontier on this question of "privilege." I gave my elderly companion one or two of the mildest versions. He fell back a little surprised, on his complacency and his port. OVERSEAS MEN. The view that the men overseas are now having a "picnic" seemed to mc to show more than the normal civilian ignorance of army conditions. There is nothing the duration soldier dislikes more than parades, drills, petty discipline, and button polishing. But now his daily routine is made up of nothing else. The moment the armistice was signed (when apparently the authorities - —showing their customary amazing ignorance of the mind of the private soldier —thought the army would break loose), the word was officially sent forth that discipline was to be increased rather than relaxed, that the men were to be very thoroughly drilled, and that everyone was to be very smart. At a distance this may seem harmless enough; but for the civilian in khaki, serving perhaps his third or fourth year in France, it means much that is, to him, peculiarly irritating. For it means every day the tedious monotony, the purposeless strutting of drill, the intolerable fatHity of parades, the irritating necessity for the constant polishing of boots and gaiters and buttons —all the tedious routine that the civilian reconciled himself to, more or less cheerfully, when he was preparing to fight, but finds now, when he wants to be preparing to return to civil work, almost intolerably futile. Some officers, for "whom conditions are. of course, very much better, may be able to enjoy the life of the army of occupation. No one in the ranks, unless he has no wish to return to civil life, will be able to avoid an intense and increasing dislike of it.