3 JUNE 1938, Page 2

The Conscription Controversy No exception can reasonably be taken to

the Prime Minister's statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday on the question of conscription in the event of war. Sir Thomas Inskip, letting drop forty-eight hours earlier an announcement of the first importance in the form of a casual obiter dictum, had stirred up considerable and intelligible agitation, and his suggestion that if war came the Government would be ready to assign to every able-bodied man his appro- priate job seemed to argue the existence of some incredibly elaborate scheme of national service, military and civil. The Prime Minister has reduced that conception to quite rational proportions.. There was military conscription in the last War, and on the assumption (far less reasonable today than sixteen years ago) that the next war, if it comes, may resemble the last, a draft Conscription Bill was framed in 1922 and has been revised by various Governments since. That appears to be the whole story, and it is as far as any Government could go today. No one can foresee what the nature of a major war would be, but it appears in be a generally accepted axiom that this country would be unlikely to send vast armies to fight again overseas. Man-power, in fact, might not have to be drawn on extensively for the mechanised warfare of the next campaign.