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Saturday 14 May 2011

Voluntary Recruitment: Why it Wasn't Enough

Conscription is the compulsory enrollment of personnel into a national service, usually involving the military. Its origins can be traced all the back to ancient times. Military conscription was widely used in warrior societies such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Japan in the time of the samurai and the Aztec Empire. Conscription found its way into Europe during the middle ages.

At the beginning of the first world war, all European countries aside from Britain had the system of conscription in place. During the first two years of the war, over three million British men had volunteered into the army. However due to heavy losses on the Western Front, in 1916, Britain was forced to introduce compulsory military conscription for healthy men between the ages of 18-41.

Australia, a devoted colony of the British Empire, faced similar problems.

An Australian Recruitment Poster
In Australia, many men wanted to join the army and fight for the country. Sadly most could not because the entry requirements were very strict. Half of the contingent had to have had some sort of war experience. The rest of them had to be physically fit, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five and be over 167cm in height. Because of these restrictions, the number of enlistments for the army declined. However, when the Gallipoli campaign was started, the physical requirements were slackened and the number of enlistments increased again.

World War One saw 416,809 men volunteering to fight in the Australian army.

3 comments:

Madhusha and Tara said...

Hi Nicola and Laura,
You wrote a really nice post. You clearly explained why conscruiption was used and how it made a significant difference to the size of the armies. It seemed like a good idea to build up size of armies. It was sad to hear that they wouldn't let shorter people go to war, I'm sure that this would have insulted these poor people terribly. But, why would they make a height limit for these soldiers? surely if they wanted stronger armies, they would just accept everyone?

Nicola and Laura said...

Thank you <3
Umm, well... since the war took place in the early 20th century, they may have had different thinking. They probably thought that taller is stronger. We dont know this for sure and definitely dont agree with it (i mean look at me- laura- im tiny). It may have also been in place because of the equipment. They moved the height restriction down so its all good :D

mcwilkins said...

Very interesting, particularly the information about conscription in Ancient Greece, Rome and Japan. Why do you think Great Britain did not already have conscription in place prior to the outbreak of war? It seems a bit strange when all the other Great Powers had conscription...