Evening Post WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1941. MORE COMPULSION IN BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 134, 3 December 1941, Page 8

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1941. MORE COMPULSION IN BRITAIN

Now, as in the recent past, it is necessary to dilute w^r-optimism with the acid of common sense. To tell ourselves explanatory stories of why cruisers sometimes get sunk and why land corridors sometimes get broken is not so important as to provide more cruisers and more armies and more fighting equipment, so that victory not attainable in 1941 may be attained in '1942 or 1943 or 1944. In this year, 1941, the balance between men and material is already shifting. Material in the capital sense—factories, producing machinery, producing assets of all kinds—Britain was short of in the period 1939-41, but Mr. Churchill now tells the House of Commons that that period is, drawing to a close, and that in the year 1942 the question of. Man-power and woman-power will be dominant. That is to say, up till lately Britain had more man-power and woman-power than she had factories and machinery to employ them; she now has succeeded in creating added war producing and manufacturing equipment, and she therefore must find additional men or women workers. Last year the centre of gravity passed from man to machine; next year it will pass from machine to man (and woman). That is one reason why the House of ! Commons will be asked to pass a Bill to mobilise the workers of both sexes; to compulsorily call up single women between the ages of 20 and 30; to raise the military service age. from 41 to 51, and to lower it to l&J, in the case of males; and to register boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 18.

British public opinion as a whole is in favour of compulsion if compulsion does not admit of undesirable exceptions; but individual opinion [may differ as to whether certain exceptions are desirable or not. "Why conscript labour and not wealth?" is a common question. Another common question is: "Why conscript some persons and not others? Why | not probe the exempted or reserved occupations, and release persons sheltering there unnecessarily?" A Liberal member of the House of Commons thought that the Churchill Government's legislative proposals did not go far enough with regard to property;, he does not appear to have grappled with the problem of how a Government can take over businesses without losing the taxes they yield.. As regards occupations in which people are exempted from military service, a similar problem arises: how to secure these workers for war service without losing their essential production. In this case it is proposed to deal with the workers individually instead of collectively. In the last war vital industries, the workers of which were exempted from war service, had to be "combed" and "combed" again. The Bill itself appears to be drafted in that direction, but its actual terms are not yet published. Individual Liberal, Labour, and Conservative members of the House of Commons fear that, in the application of compulsory principles to human beings and property, the Government is still in the rear of public opinion. One of .the women speakers in the House of Commons debate said that women were ready to serve and "needed only direction." On this evidence, the feminine half of the electorate can be welded into a great army, if its sectional susceptibilities provide no obstacle. If all sections of women loved each other as, mu6h as collectively they love their country, democracy would possess in its women a great shield—the kind of shield that is particularly needed in total war. Mr. Churchill seems to envisage a condition in which the service of women will be as realistic as it is in Russia. "Women," he says, "must play a still greater part in the war, and the movement must be towards the harder form, of service and nearer the fighting-line." But the women "will have choice of the auxiliary forces, civil defence, or industrial work." The passing of legislation will mark a definite British beginning in the co-ordinating of human power and material. As industry completes ships, there will be a new demand for man-power—this is happening now under the naval construction programme—and as armaments of all kinds issue from producing industry, so also must the sources of man-power be equal to manning them. Without State compulsion, this cannot be done. Germany of course did it long ago. Tho democracies comfort themselves with saying, "Better late than never." What they should be saying is "Bntler never late." *

Mr. Churchill has administered a knock to the "let us leave it to Russia" notion. The Prime Minister thinks that Britain can catch trouble from a Russian victory over Hitler just as she certainly would catch trouble from a Russian clef eg t. "A.* any time," he remarks, "Hitler might recognise his defeat by the Russian armies, and might endeavour to cover Ills disaster in the East by wreaking his battle fury on us." In 1940 it was in the West, not in the East, that Hitler scored his biggest success. He might again try Western luck, the France of 1940 being his inspiration, and the France of 1942 being possibly his ally.