30,000 Get 30 Days

At peace, the U. S. got ready last week to draft a first batch of 400,000 men for twelve months' military training. At war, Canada last week called to the colors and put in training camps 30,000 men for 30 days.

Officers in all Canadian camps were at pains to fraternize with the "trainees"-Minister of National Defense James Garfield ("Halfway") Gardiner ordered that they must not be called "draftees" or "conscripts," and that all heavy camp work must be done by Canadian regulars. Reason: in the short period of training no time could be wasted. An emergency at Long Branch Camp occurred when the automatic potato-peeling machine failed to arrive in time and some of the men had to be asked to sit down with knives and peel potatoes.

Each trainee received a Government pamphlet telling him that baseball and football teams would shortly be organized and that everyone would be given Sundays and Saturday afternoons off, thus bringing down the period in camp from 30 days to 22 of actual training. Jewish youths were told they might have all day Saturday off to celebrate the Day of Atonement. In the camps no beer is served--Canadian church groups successfully protested. But in most areas trainees could buy whatever they liked to drink at nearby hotels. At most camps parade drill on the first day took the form of an at-ease sightseeing tour.

Canadian industrialists bombarded the Government with complaints that for even 30,000 young men to get even 30 days in training camps was taking so many skilled workers out of factories as to hamper the main Dominion war effort: industrial production. Originally Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, when the draft bill was being prepared, asked Canadian Army bigwigs what was the very shortest possible training period for draftees which would make any sense at all from a military point of view. He was answered: two months. The 30-day camping period, a political compromise, was an expression of the fact that Canada, at war for over a year, was still unwilling to face conscription. No one dreamed that the 30-day trainees would be of any earthly military use.

The Canadian press spoke out. Said the Toronto Telegram: "The whole program looks like a political sideshow designed to put up a front of doing something without arousing ill feeling on the part of those who are called up." Said the Globe & Mail: "All military experts reject [the scheme] as comparatively useless. . . . Soldiers who had barely learned to shoulder arms and form threes would be no more effective against the highly trained and mechanized forces of the enemy we are now fighting than an unorganized mob equipped with pitchforks."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.