New Zealand's first experiment with compulsory military training, 1900-1914

Abstract

Today, compulsory military training is an accepted part of the defence structure of the nations of the Western World. Since 1945, a new "warrior age" has dawned, and the risk of atomic warfare has become as much a part of daily living as the danger of being involved in a motor accident, or of losing one's employment. Compulsory military training may be regarded as a symbol of the age: an age which sets as the price of national security intensive peacetime preparation for war. Compulsory military training is the modern conscription. Conscription has taken many forms in many countries, but the most notorious system was that which originated in France during the revolutions and was continued by the first and third Napoleons. This became known as the continental system. A certain number of young men in prescribed age-groups were annually drawn by lot for service with the army for five years, and they provided the nucleus of a standing army which, if the country was at war could be sent to fight anywhere in the world. The long period of service, and the irksome nature of barrack's life, made the continental system very unpopular, and when in 1870 the French armies failed to meet the Prussian challenge it was completely discredited.