Universal Military Training and Military Preparedness

Abstract

T HE introduction of what is termed universal military training but can never be that, and is now proposed for only 850,000 out of a possible 1,133,000 or more boys reaching the age of 18 annually, will split our military establishment into two parts. The first will be the regular, professional Army, with distinct and separate duties at home and abroad. The second will be the organization to train the annual levy of 620,000 youths for a period of twelve months of intensive drill precisely like that given in this war to the drafted recruits. Since one of these two branches of the Army will be solely for instruction-and indoctrination-and the other will perform the domestic and overseas duties of a permanent standing Army, it needs no demonstration that there can rightly be little or no co-ordination of effort between the two forces except in maneuvers during the latter part of the training of the drafted