A New Look for the Army
On Monday all units of the Territorial Army received an Army Council Instruction dealing with arrangements for their intake of National Servicemen, which is due to begin in July. The General Staff's approach to this problem is reasonably practical and imagina- tive, but the problem itself—on whose solution depends both the future of our land forces and our ability to appear capable of ful- filling our commitments to our Allies—looks no less awkward than had been expected. After 18 months regular service the National Serviceman will, in effect, become a civilian who must carry out a further 60 days' training, spread over four years, as a conscript in a Territorial unit, but who may opt to do this tour of duty— and perhaps prolong it—as a volunteer. As such he is eligible for certain bounties. The atmosphere of the Welfare State in its present stage of development has not proved favourable (except in the field of emigration) to the volunteer spirit, and the existing Territorial Army, on whom thii heavy additional responsibility is to be thrown, is hopelessly under strength, though it contains a very high pro- portion of officers and N.C.O.s. Theoretically, the influx of large numbers of young men (most Territorials are getting on in life) should be just what it needs ; but the human problem of fusing the voluntary spirit, strengthened in most cases by memories of comradeship in war, with the outlook of youthful ex-conscripts, whose main concern will naturally be to make up at the outset of their civilian careers for what they regard as time lost in the Regular service, will not be an easy one to solve, especially for officers who only see their men at irregular intervals. It is, more- over, a disturbing fact that no Territorial unit has yet been given the vaguest idea of the numbers or timing of its intake. There is a general impression that fighting units, infantry battalions in particular, will find that the expected flood is only a trickle
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