108
ƌŽŬĞŶ WƌŽŵŝƐĞƐ
The organized veterans were concerned with conditions of service,
but not quite in the way their former commander had foreseen. Re-
turned soldiers bitterly resented the privileges that staff officers had
received during the war:
Oh, the generals have a bloody good time
Fifty miles behind the line.
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.
“We have learned who our enemies are,” one soldier wrote in
Gener-
als Die in Bed
, probably the best Canadian novel about the war, “the
lice, some of our officers, and Death.” And with the peace the officers
seemed to get the good jobs and the best deal from the government.
No wonder then that the returned men sought service gratuities for
themselves now that peace had returned. Conscription scarcely inter-
ested them. Occasionally, as at the British Columbia Great War Veter-
ans’ Association convention in 1921, some zealot would introduce a
motion calling vaguely for peacetime compulsory service; on occasion
the motion would carry.
7
Others would demand resolutions calling for
the conscription of wealth as well as manpower in the event of war.
8
But the predominant talk was of pensions, pensions, pensions, and the
organized veterans soon became a pressure group like the others, fruit-
lessly demanding their due. Certainly they were not a great machine
pressing for conscription.
As a result, universal military training along the lines suggested by
Colonel Merritt, Major Mowat, and General Gwatkin was quickly seen
to be an impossibility. But perhaps a modified scheme, calling for one
or two days’ service each month and a full month’s training in each
of four years, might be possible. This at any rate was the proposal of
Brigadier A.G.L. McNaughton in a memorandum he prepared for the
Otter committee in 1919.
9
This idea, like the others, proved simply
unacceptable in the light of public opinion. Sentiment, Currie was re-
luctantly forced to concede, was “overwhelmingly against any form of
universal training,” and the best plan was “not to attempt to force the
issue and proceed meanwhile with other things.”
10
Anti-military feeling in general, and not just that against universal
military training, was also growing. The Minister of Militia introduced
a bill on 24 June 1919 to amend the Militia Act by increasing the es-
tablishment of the permanent force from 5,000 to 10,000 men. His
reasoning was simple: “I do not feel pessimistic about the future but I
think that without any doubt I would be negligent in my duty ... if I did
not propose that we should have some force that would be available
for the preservation of law and order in the country.”
11
His reference
