Conscription Troubles

One of the thorniest problems of the Prime Ministers of Canada, Australia and South Africa is internal opposition to sending conscripted soldiers beyond national boundaries. Each country has the right to conscript soldiers for home defense, but relies on volunteers for overseas forces. Each Prime Minister is proud of the number who volunteer, but each knows how the restrictions, growing out of nationalism and past quarrels with Britain, handicap the war effort.

After a national plebiscite Canada's William Lyon Mackenzie King took the power, through an order-in-council, to send conscripts abroad--but has not used it. Last week Australia's dour, lank John Curtin sought the same power. Before Parliament was a draft-act amendment that, if it did not carry, might cause his Government to fall. To U.S. soldiers who had come 8,000 miles to help defend Australia, it seemed ludicrous that Australian troops, aside from volunteers, could not move freely throughout the South Pacific. But the Labor Party's no-conscript-overseas plank was firmly nailed down. Last spring Curtin himself led a fight which defeated a proposal for change, saying it would be made "when the time comes."

South Africa's Jan Christiaan Smuts faced the same problem of draftee restrictions and prepared for a battle royal. To get his troops into the battles of North Africa, wise old Smuts called for volunteers who were willing to serve anywhere in Africa. Those who responded among the home-service draftees got red tabs on their shoulders. Those who did not were easily weeded out as disloyal.

Convinced that an Allied invasion of southern Europe is not only imminent but highly desirable, Smuts needs to extend the area where his troops can operate. So he last week called for parliamentary reform of South Africa's 1912 Defense Act. On the wave of patriotism following the recapture of Tobruk, Smuts cried that South Africans must now rescue 12,000 of their countrymen held prisoners in Italy. He was well aware of the attacks he would face from his two leading opposition parties: Dr. Daniel Franc,ois Malan's antiwar, pro-Nazi Herenigde and Dr. J. F. J. van Rensburg's antiwar, pro-Nazi Ossewa Brandwag. As an indication that he was not too greatly worried, Smuts announced that, having been invited many times by President Roosevelt, he might take time off from political affairs to visit the U.S.

To have Smuts out of the country, even though he covers himself with international acclaim as he did in Britain recently, is what the two rival nationalist groups want above all else. Last week they both wished that he had never been born 72 years ago. What had been dreamed up as a political masterpiece by their respective party chieftains in the sleepy little town of Ventersdorp turned into ridicule and recrimination.

The affair was another attempt to get the two bitterly antagonistic, power-hungry party leaders together. By merging their parties they could embarrass and possibly defeat Smuts at the polls in next year's elections. Aware of this, the Ventersdorp henchmen promised their supporters that Drs. Malan and van Rensburg would appear on the same platform. Still on their own, they set up the rules for the meeting: 1) Malan and van Rensburg could not avoid the contest except through "death or illness"; 2) each would speak (without interruptions, questions or catcalls) for an hour and a half; 3) the chairman would be neutral; 4) rival party members would not wear badges or display partisan banners. Party leaders promised to resign if the meeting fell through.

When Smuts heard about it he provided all facilities, but let it be known that extra police would be around if the love feast turned into a riot. Smuts supporters then gleefully billed the meeting as a "gnat-weight championship bout" between "Man-Eating Malan" (who is small, potbellied, owl-faced) and "HellFire Hansie van Rensburg" (who is tall, round-knobbed, bull-voiced). Pro-Smuts newspapers assigned sports writers to cover the match.

As could be expected, Der Tag was called off.

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