1939-07-17 — Page 30

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THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, MONDAY, JULY 17, 1939.

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IN THE FAR EAST IS ITS ABILITY TO WITHSTAND CLIMATIC CONDITIONS OVER A PERIOD OF TIME.

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THE

HONG KONG

PENINSULA HOTEL;

THE NEW

VAUXHALL

"10"

The statement that the Vauxhall Ten gives most for your money is based on almple facts. Independent springing; hydraulle brakes; control. led synchromesh; over 40 m.p.d. (pe- trol) 3,500 mp.g. (oll). Is there another Ten which can boast these features? Yet they are but I few of tive · many to be found in thle

Vauxhall.

Illustration shows the New 118'} Coupe. With all the comfort, easy driving and economy features of the Saloon madets.

May we demonstrate?

HONGKONG HOTEL GARAGE

Phones: 27778-9

Stubbs Rd,

I've done my time in the

army-

-and liked it: Report by a Frenchman on how conscription affected him

AM a

Frenchman,

Those not fit enough for full-

thirty-one years old time service are given jobs as married, with three children.

officers' servants, cooks, canteen helps. Those physically unfit are excused.

Like all Frenchmen, I have If you enlist before you are been "conscripted," or, as we twenty you can plck your osyn prefer to say, I have done my regiment.' If you go into the military service.

colonial service you get better Like almost all my fellow. pay.

I went into the 157th Artil- countrymen, if wor were to

After Bix break out to-morrow I would lery Regiment. have to go at once to join my months' special training and regiment "somewhere. in several examinations I became France."

a brigadier-an artillery cor- poral-in an anti-aircraft bat- We have had compulsory mili- tory. The bugle got us out of tary service in France over since bad every morning at 6. Wo the Franco-Prussian war, when had breakfast, coffee and bread, HENG.-On July 18, 1930, at her the Prussian Army-the Prus- then drill, gun instruction and

residence, 736, Nathan Road, Wilhelmina (Mina) Ems Danen-Bians had been conscripted since other courses. berg, beloved wife of A. Heng. 1807-overthrew our troops and

At 11-lunch. Army food has Funeral will pass the Monument marched along the Champs- at 5.45 p.m. to-day, July 17.

Elysées and under the Arc de become much better lately. Hors d'oeuvres, a substantial Triomphe.

Most of us have often won- plate of meat and vegetables, a

DEATHI

The

Hongkong Telegraph.dered why there was such an- quart of wine, and fruit are

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26616

July 17, 1939.

ereases, and according to published!

now on the menu at all bar-

tagonism by British people racks. against compulsory military

service.

Drill again from one till five, When I was nine-in 1916- when all men except those on I used to watch the Tommies special duty were allowed out in marching towards the Somme, the town till lights out at 10.

MAN'S job is kept open for him while

cailed

קנון

for onc

My

France.

GRIN AND BEAR IT

By Lichty

6.1% 30

"And I suppose I'll have to send an invitation to Mrs. Gadby, but how can I write it so she won't come?"

Conscription

In Germany

WE have grown so used to thinking of the German Army as the most powerful force in Western Europe that few people realis" how short a time it has been in existence. Five years ago the Gorman Reichswehr was only half the size of the British Re- gular Army to-day.

By the Peace Treaty it had been limited to 100,000 men, organised in seven infantry and three cavalry divisions. This small force had no military value except for the purpose of main- taining internal order, for it possessed no tanks, no ucroplanes, and no artillery of larger calibre than 4-in, guna,

constant, icnowledge.

cold

It

Officialdom

I remember how our Poilus A EACH year the number of Civil praised them as soldiers.

Servanta in Hongkong in- AT twenty-five I was he is undergoing service in

The treaty had also laid down' that time, all young Germans had to do a figures the total is now about year's military training. The If his boss doesn't offer him

the term of service was to be twelve full year in Labour Service, where, 11,000; MU that roughly one term has now been extended to work on his return to civilian years, so as to prevent the Germans since digging and entrenching form out of every hundred persona is two. The usual age for calling life the soldier may take the from repeating the process that they a great part of the activities of the an official. Naturally, although no men up is twenty, but in special case before a labour court, where had practised after their defeat by modern soldier, they acquired useful.

Napoleon of passing

These "Labour Volunteers" wore time when, as circumstances it one is already he receives on proving his succession of men through the ranks one envisages n Gilbert put it, "everyone, is some-married, for instance-service claim-an indemnity the amount so as to build up the maximum military uniform and underwent a process of physical development and **** | bọdre” in an official sense, and can be postponed.

of which depends on the impossible of trained reserves.

Even before Hitler came to power, hardening which was excellent pre- when Hongkong rather like the At twenty-five I was the portance of the lost job,

the German Government had set it-paration for military service, fabulous islandera who lived by father of two children.

If a young soldier has no seit to overcome these limitations.

one I remember

bitterly taking in one another's washing. wife received £1 13s a month for job when he goes into camp General Secckt, for many years winter morning In Upper Bavarin will exist by looking after ono the family's upkeep.

he may, if he wishes, join Commander-in-Chief, regarded the being awakened about dawn by the Reichswehr 35 1 seed-bed from tramp of feet and tho sound of men's another's affairs, there are some That, in 1933, was not enough the army for a five-year period, which at some future date a great voices singing a marching tune,

bo went on so long that I got up to look people who took upon this ten to pay the rent. I was lucky and then sign up for another national service Army would

planted out. Its discipline und in- out of the window, and there, with dency with disfavour, 28

an enough to receive permission to five if he likes the life.

struction were of the highest spades sloped over their shoulders approach to bureaucracy.

do some work "on the side" as Since my regular training standard.

and carrying packs arranged with the neptness of the Guards Brigado, was The point is #i difficult one, newspaper correspondent. My have been called up for short since it is purely a question of army pay was only 25.centimes training periods to keep in touch degree. For a Government in (about 1d.) a day.

with the new material and the How do wives who have to Intest methods of modern these days that sets muk to be

allowance get fare. paternal and progressive. inevit exist on this ably releases a flood of com-

along? Well, either they are plicated legislation, which cun helped by relatives or they have only be administered by inaking to look for jobs. use of departmental control of a measure of bureaucracy. In this particular instance, however, those who have misgivinga might remem- ber Pope's advice:

HONGKONG HOTEL: REPULSE BAY HOTEL:

&

SHANGHAI

ASTOR HOUSE; PALACE HOTEL;

HOTELS

LIMITED.

In association with, the Grand Hotel des Wagons Lits, Peking

COUNT THE "TELEGRAPHS"

EVERYWHERE

For forms of government let tool

contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best. Too sweeping a statement, no doubt; but if there be, as surely there in, a modicum of good sense in it, we should gain some comfort thereby. For the reputation of

members

The general rule in the French Army is to send a recruit as far away as possible from his home town or village.

A Parisian will be sent to the or Northern South of France Africa, while a man from Nice or Marseilles will be sent to the

Maginot Line or Northern France.

Papier Mache Armour a

long column of sturdy Labour Ser- HE military education of the vice men tramping through the half- private soldiers was carried to light over the frozen snow on their war-the level laid down in other armies way to the day's work,

for non-commissioned officers, which There are both advantages and dis- was the function they were intended advantages in suddenly setting up a to fuldt when the contemplated ex-conscript Army. Everything can be pansion ultimately came about.

Although Germany possessed tanks or heavy artillery, Relchswehr carried out manoeuvres as if it had them.

I saw troops at exercise in those

I was one of the two million called up last September and went to join my battery "some- where in France."

When a man is called up for a "refresher course his employer continues to pay his salary or wage. And, again, there is that

ed. a day.

organised on the most modern scale, no unhampered. by long-standing prac- the ice or vested interests, and a new its Army naturally recolves the most up-·

to-date equipment,

On the other hand. Germany found

days with dummy tanks, consisting difficulty in providing omcers of the of ordinary motor-cars covered with middle ranks, such as captain and major. Sentor commanders could be Imitation armour of papier mache to drawn from the veterans of the Great make them recognisable for what war, and the subaltern grades were they were supposed to represent. THE strangest

filled by Intelligent young Nazis, or Most significant of all was the fact by officers promoted from the ranks ment against

that the German General Staff was of the professional Reichswehr. scription to French ears is that portion to the comparative insigni- maintained on a basis out of all pro-

There was also a great tack of

argu- con-

it is undemocratic. The French-ncance of the troops at its disposition, trained reserves, which the Govern THIS gives young pea- man feels that in his mill- Many officers held camouflaged ment to some extent remedied by

sants a chance to see tary service he

finds.. real rank by being nominally attached to calling up for short periods of re- the Civil Service is second to none. the world. For recruits who are democracy.

civilian transport or supply organisa-resher-training the younger of the tions, so that when the time for re-men who had seen service in the war. It exacts from its

The analready married or have a family

new Army become the Premier Daladier did his ser- pudiating the military limitations of incorruptible devotion to duty, to support the case is different. vice as a sergeant in the in- only to put on uniform to take their ment. Whatever other branch of the the Peace Treaty arrived they needed favourite child of the Nazl Govern- and, what is less generally recog-I was allowed to serve at Nice, fantry. Maginot, who built the pinces as fully qualified Staff Officers, national life had to go short, it was nised, much self-sacriflee from its where I was living, and, like all famous steel belt along the

not the Wehrmacht, as it was called abilities other married men in the bar- Rhine,

Hidden Arms highest ulcers, whose

thenceforward, and the keenness of was also n Hergeant would obtain a far greater monet-racks, allowed to sleep at home during the war.

S soon as Hitler came to power in the officers and men justified the pre- Aristide A January 1933, he began to expand

ferential treatment given them. Briand, maker ary reward in the business world. one night out of two.

of the Peace the Reichswehr, though still keeping earlier

Though the "traditions” of the

regiments The young Frenchman's first Pact, served as a private, and it on a professional service basis. By handed on to the new

were solemnly So long as such a tradition is up- held by the servants of the State, contact with the army is a call President Poincare

the end of 1034 it had been raised to called into existence, the resuscitated In lieutenant, in his young days, in wore formed, into which the long respects from its pre-war predecessor.

300,000 men. New skeleton divisions German there is the less reason to fear the for medical examination.

Army differs in many result oven though there were "In each town district and in every the Blue Devils-the French service men of the Reichswehr were Class-spirit has disappeared, and

village the medical examining Alpine troops,

drafted to act as instructors. Stocks every German soldier knows that point of fact too many."

board-composed of the mayor, When I first went to the bar of arms and equipment, including the ability is the only basis of promotion. Cambridge Steps Forward the municipal councillors, and racks I met among my fellow-manufactured and hidden away.

weapons until-lien forbidden, were several military doctors-sit recruits a young ascetic-looking twice a year.

It is 19 years since the University of Oxford first admitted women to full membership, bestowing on them

WAS а

formations

No Weary Marches

T

Then suddenly, on March 10, 1935, priest, whose black cassock was

come the proclamation of conscrip- the end of 1930 the period of The recruits, supervised by in contrast to the civilian clothes for all young men of 20 and 21 to two years, which had the effects

tion, with one year's military service

military service was increased to a peculiar cap as well as the normal gendarmes, strip off their cloth the rest of us wore.

begin in the autumn of that year. raising the German first-line troops Behind types of gown. Cambridge, thoughing and are examined.

He was the butt for a lot of At one stroke, a national service to close on 1,000,000 men.

Army of 600,000 Once passed equally generous in the matter of

as "good for sarcastic jokes for the first few brought into existence, and the rum 2,000,000 trained soldiers as reserves. men was thus these 60 divisions Germany now has admission to lectures and to "tular" armed service" the future sol days, but he song such good ber of divisions was increased from The Army has once more become degrees, still keeps its women dier, still naked and blushing, songs in the dormitory at night10 to 39.

the most conspicuous feature of atudents constitutionally oulalde the

German national life. · Its grey they tread the path of learning, and congratulated by the mayor,

the government of the university pro- ceeds without feminine votes. By

an un-

university, Capless and gownless do turns to the councillors and is that he soon won respect. Open-Country Exorcise uniform ta lo be seen all over the

In my battery we had, also, a achieving this, Germany had country. stout round-faced boy whose certain advantages which are not Whereas in pre-war daye military the appointment to a Cambridge Pro- so far appointed no women pro father was a wealthy banker at shared by Britain. For years the service was regarded as fessorship of a distinguished woman fessors, may feel itself stirred to Marseilles.

younger men of the Nazi Party had pleasant duty, the modern young archacologist a curious logicnt post-emulate this forward step, and' Cam-

been organised in two semi-military German shows no unwillingness to do tion is now created.

Of the others In the battery corps, known as the Storm Troopers la two years with the Colours. The bridge meanwhile has the honour of Miss Dorothy Garrod, the Pro-ranging itself beside the "modern" one was a locksmith, another n and the S.S. Guards. There were tedium of barrack-square drill and fessor-designate, has us fuil a fume universities. But the curious in both taxi-driver, two were farm at that time about 1,000,000 Storm the weariness of long route marches us an excavator us was earned in Universllics—and outalde them will hands.

Troopers and nearly 200,000 of the have given place in modern armies to another branch of archaeology by continue to wonder why, when the

Black Guards,

mechanical instruction and motorised that learned Cambridge lady, the late mannstle traditions of Cambridge are I would serve if war came.

These are the men with whom

These formations did not carry transport in which the youth of the Miss Jane Harrison. Yet, though the so wisely abandoned in practice, their

arms, but they were accustomed to present day finds real interest- future head of her faculty, Miss anti-feminist ghost should haunt the

march-discipline and received ins- Garrod remains as much exterior to Cam, and women all remain not

truction in skirmishing under the the university as a whole as was Miss undergraduates und graduates but

name of "Gelandeubung," or "open- Harrison herself. Oxford, which has theoretically external students.

country exercise," Moreover, at that'

Robert Chasseuil

G. W. P.

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