Showing posts with label New Zealand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Zealand. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

The Easter Riots Commence in Quebec City, March 28, 1918.

Several days of rioting, which would run through April 1, commenced on this day in Quebec City in 1918.

 
An example of a Canadian recruiting poster directed at the residents of Montreal (with which my family has a connection). Such efforts were not entirely successful.  This unit sought to recruit members of the fairly large Irish Canadian community of Quebec.

The underlying cause of the riots was conscription, which was deeply unpopular in Canada in general and hugely unpopular in Quebec, which saw the war as a European affair that they had very little stake or interest in.  404,385 Canadian men became liable for military service under the Military Service Act, which became law on January 1. 385,510 sought exemption and, given the vague nature of the statute, most succeeded.

The immediate cause of the rioting was the arrest of a French Canadian man who failed to present his exemption papers.  He was released, but things soon were totally out of control.  Soldiers had to be called into the city under the War Measures Act of 1914.  The deeply unpopular act and the riots lead to the proposed Francœur Motion under which Quebec was proposed to declare that it would be happy to leave the Canadian union if the rest of the then very English country found Quebec to be "an obstacle to the union, progress and development of Canada".  The motion was not introduced in the end out of a fear of what it would lead to.

In some ways the rioting strongly recalls the reaction that the Irish had to conscription which lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916. England itself had no tradition of conscription for land service (it did for sea service) and conscription was actually more strongly established in the United States which had required militia service by state in all states up until after the Civil War, with there being outright conscription during the Civil War.  The English accepted it however.  None of the Dominions took well to it and Ireland, part of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, was massively opposed to it.  Originally the Irish were exempted from English conscription but when that was repealed in 1916 it lead to the Easter Rebellion and ultimately to the Anglo Irish War and Irish independence.  Australia rejected attempts to impose conscription in that Dominion in a national plebiscite, while New Zealand on the other hand adopted it.  Canada too adopted it after a prior failed attempt, but as can be seen, it was not a success and it fueled early thoughts of Quebec separation.

The irony of this is that while this was occurring, Ireland, Australia and Canada all contributed large bodies of men to the war voluntarily.  So,in the end, efforts to impose conscription in those localities were at best a waste of time and effort and at worst a cause of net manpower loss.

It's worth noting that conscription remained unpopular in Australia and Canada during World War Two and while both nations imposed it, only late in the war were conscripts required to serve overseas.  In Australia's case disgruntled conscripts were a source of poor units that otherwise stand apart from the really notable fighting qualities of the Australian Army.  Canadian conscripts seem to have accepted their late war fate and generally have worked out well when they were finally required to go overseas.  Ireland was of course independent , although a dominion, by World War Two, and it refused to declare war but once again supplied a large number of troops to the British forces.  Surprisingly Australia twice imposed conscription post World War Two, once during the Korean War and again during the Vietnam War.  Canada briefly followed the British example of Cold War conscription but phased it out very quickly and has never resumed it.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 
The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.


That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.


Saturday, August 30, 2014

Sunday, August 30, 1914. The Imperial Russian Army destroyed at Tannenberg.

The German Army wiped out Imperial Russian forces at Tannenberg, taking 92,000 prisoners and inflicting 78,000 casualties.  10,000 Russian soldiers escaped.  The Germans took 12,000 casualties.



Russian commander Alexander Samsonov is believed to have committed suicide after walking into nearby woods. German troops found hsi body a year later.

The Russian chances of ending the war before the winter of 1914 were over, and the German gamble of taking on the Imperial Russian Army early on had paid off.

20,000 Austro Hungarians were taken prisoner by the Russians at Gnila Lipa.

French forces withdrew at Saint Quentin, but in an orderly fashion.

New Zealand invaded and took German Samoa.

Emiliano Zapata agreed to support the government of Venustiano Carranza.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Sunday, August 23, 1914. Maurice James Dease

The Battle of Mons occurred in which the BEF held the German forces, but began a month long retreat to the Marne.

Irishman Maurice James Dease became the first British officer to be killed in action, for which he additionally won the Victoria Cross.

The machine gun crews were constantly being knocked out. So cramped was their position that when a man was hit he had to be removed before another could take his place. The approach from the trench was across the open, and whenever a gun stopped Lieutenant Maurice Dease... went up to see what was wrong. To do this once called for no ordinary courage. To repeat it several times could only be done with real heroism. Dease was badly wounded on these journeys, but insisted on remaining at duty as long as one of his crew could fire. The third wound proved fatal, and a well deserved VC was awarded him posthumously. By this time both guns had ceased firing, and all the crew had been knocked out. In response to an inquiry whether anyone else knew how to operate the guns Private Godley came forward. He cleared the emplacement under heavy fire and brought the gun into action. But he had not been firing long before the gun was hit and put completely out of action. The water jackets of both guns were riddled with bullets, so that they were no longer of any use. Godley himself was badly wounded and later fell into the hands of the Germans.

German troops killed 654 Belgian civilians in Dinant, Belgium in confusion or panic regarding francs-tireurs

The French were defeated in the  Battle of the Ardennes and the Battle of Charleroi.

The Battle of Tannenberg began between the German Army and the Imperial Russian Army.

The Battle of Kraśnik began between the Austro Hungarian Army and the Imperial Russian Army.

Japan declared war on Germany.  China canceled the German lease of the Kiaochow Bay.

New Zealand occupied the German colony of German Samoa, following an unopposed invasion.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 22, 1914. British at Mons.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Thursday, August 4, 1914. Augusterlebnis

Germans, unaware that their nation would be bled white, and unalterably changed, celebrated the arrival of war.

All Germany's political parties supported the entry into the bloodbath.

And they were fighting for . . .what?

Germany replaced gold marks with paper marks for the duration of the war.

German Communists Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin co-founded with others the Spartacus League.

Germany invaded Belgium, once again bringing up its war guilt.  Belgium had done nothing to offend Germany.  It was invaded for tactical reasons as the Von Schlieffen Plan required it as part of a wide swinging German right flank invasion of France.

The German army shelled Kaisz, Poland to suppress a civil uprising there.

Imperial German Navy cruisers Goeben and Breslau shelled Algerian ports of Bône and Philippeville, defying orders to proceed straight to Constantinople.

The United Kingdom declared war on Germany, taking Canada, Australia and New Zealand into war with it, as legally, the UK declared war for its dominions at the time.  The Canadian government passed the War Measures Act, suspending some civil liberties.  

The British government took control of British railways.

Retired British Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald formed the Order of the White Feather to persuade women to offer white feathers to men not in uniform to shame them into enlisting.


The UK did not have a tradition of land army conscription at the time so it was anticipated that the war would be fought with volunteers.

The United States declared neutrality.

Andrew Carnegie continued with an international peace conference he had organized of religious leaders in Belgium.

The organization it created became the Church Peace Union and is now the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Zayanes in Morocco launched a siege on Khenifra, Morocco, taking advantage of with French troops being withdrawn for service on the continent.

Last edition:

Monday, August 3, 1914. "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."