The French proposal for the abolition of professional armies and
the substitution of short-service conscript forces recalls a story of an episode in the Peace Conference discussions, as told me by a British officer concerned in it. Early in the Conference the Military Committee was told to draft the military clauses of the Treaty on the basis of a force of 400,000 men for Germany. They duly set to work and were well ahead with it when instructions came down from the politicians (Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George) that the total was to be 200,000. They started again, only . to get fresh instructions to make the figure 100,000. Sir Henry Wilson fumed. " The.frogs must be mad," he said. • "It isn't enough for a police force." Everyone expected Lloyd George to put up a fierce fight against the reduction—but he accepted it, on the ground that with no more than 100,000 -Germans under arms France. could not refuse to abandon conscription. But she did, and now she is for extending it everywhere—a pro- posal not necessarily to be condemned so long as the term of service is short enough to make the resultant force something like a militia.
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