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ƌŽŬĞŶ WƌŽŵŝƐĞƐ
Parliament, but conscription was not a key issue, except for its use as
a propaganda device in some general elections in Quebec and for the
way it helped to blight the career of Arthur Meighen. What is interest-
ing, however, is the way the conscription question lingered on, the way
its proponents felt compelled to justify and explain their roles, and the
way both of the major parties used the remembrance of things past
for their partisan ends. Equally significant, by the time of the Second
World War both Liberal and Conservative Parties had rejected compul-
sory service as an acceptable means of raising men. After the experi-
ence of 1917, conscription had become a curse word.
I
The idea of peacetime universal military training was raised even be-
fore the Great War had ended. To many in Canada the lesson of 1914
seemed clear: Canada had been unprepared then and could not afford
to be so again. How best be prepared, then? The answer—train every
fit man in peacetime so that he will be ready when war comes again.
The most serious proponent of this scheme was Colonel William Ham-
ilton Merritt, the president of the virtually defunct Canadian Defence
League. In his book
Canada and National Service
, published in the
summer of 1917, Merritt discoursed on the national spirit, on various
military systems, especially that of the Swiss, and on the estimated
costs to Canada of universal military training. Nothing, the Colonel
claimed, “but a changed Militia Law—back somewhere to what it was
a hundred years ago—will give us the stability of purpose, upbuilding
of character and physique, and safety to Dominion and Empire which
comes from a virile system of national organization, based on
Univer-
sal Military Training and Service
.”
3
Stability of purpose, mental and
physical character, safety of the realm—in sum these were what all
proponents of peacetime military service trumpeted as the benefits of
their scheme.
Certainly this was the message of H.M. Mowat, the Liberal Unionist
Member of Parliament for Toronto-Parkdale and a brigade major at
Camp Borden for part of the war. Major Mowat spoke learnedly in an
October 1918 article about the demands that modern war posed for
nations. “It would be inhuman to send insufficiently trained men to
the front line with war conducted as scientifically as in 1917–18,” he
wrote, apparently unconcerned with the inhumanity of scientific war
itself. “No country could get a numerous force under the voluntary sys-
tem, and such countries will, in the future, be at a great disadvantage.
The volunteer system is obsolete.” According to Mowat, the war had
