COMPULSORY SERVICE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4176, 23 August 1939, Page 11

COMPULSORY SERVICE

SOUTH AFRICAN TRADITION. BURGHER COMMANDOES. All able-bodied South Africans can be called upon, without any legislative preliminary, for military service. The pother over conscription in Great Britain has been regarded with mild astonishment by South Africans, who have always been accustomed to the idea of compulsory national service. Every South African European boymust, on reaching the age of 17 years, register for military training, and every European citizen between 17 and 60 years can be called upon to serve in defence of his country in any part of South Africa, whether within or outside the Union. JThis liability to render national serSic<- is part and parcel of South African national life. Nobody thinks of It as conscription, but it carries the

same compulsion. The practice, significantly enough, was inherited from the freedom-loving republics of the Transvaal and the Free State, whose citizens, from 16 tp 60 years, could at any time be called on by proclamation to serve the State. The law said 16 to 60 years, but boys of 14 years and greybeards of 70 years also counted it a duty to shoulder arms for their country. While every European male is liable to undergo a course of peace training, not all who register on reaching military age are posted to the active citizen forces. A quota of recruits is required annually for each of the seven commands into which the Union defence system is divided for administrative purposes, and there are always more than enough volunteers to keep the various citizen regiments at full strength. But the young men not required for active citizen force training ®re not lightly permitted to slip through the net. They are posted to defence rifle associations, and must fire annually a prescribed course of musketry. The rifle associations are I popular and largely sporting in char-

acter, but include some of the best fighting material in the Union. They fire the nucleus of the voluntary “ burgher ” (citizen) commandoes of the rural areas, famed for their mobility, knowledge of the country, and marks--1 manship. * The burgher commandoes have a proud and acknowledged place in South Africa’s defence scheme- They can be mobilised within 24 hours, and, lightly equipped after the old republican mobilisation style, with “horse, rifle, and mouth provision for three days,” they can move and strike rapidly if need be. Men trained in the citizen forces and burgher commandoes form the citizen force reserve, but South Africa also thinks in terms of a national reserve which comprises all those citizens who, not being members of any section of the forces, are liable to render service in time of war. When the national reserve register was opened the Union’s Prime Minister and the deputy Prime Minister, both veteran generals of the AngloBoer War of 1899-1902, gave the country a lead by being among the first to register.