AUSTRALIA 6 9S 



money. Even railway fares to and from the College when Cadets go on holiday leave 

 are paid by the Government, as. are also all costs of uniform and equipment. A 

 severe but not unwholesome discipline is exacted ; the drinking of alcoholic liquors and 

 cigarette smoking are both forbidden in the College. 



It was not to be expected that a compulsory military system should be carried 

 through altogether without protest. It had some opponents, influenced by religious 

 objections or by those pacific ideals which would seek to abolish the possibility of 

 war by abolishing all organisation for national defence. But the first stage and the 

 second stage of the scheme dealing with the cadets have now (1912) been successfully 

 surmounted, and the training has been put in hand of the first draft of 20,000 of adult 

 citizen soldiers. An official statement published in September 1912 showed that 81% 

 of those affected had complied with the provisions of the Act, and that there were in 

 New South Wales only 643 offenders, "in the other states a considerably less number," 

 who were so recalcitrant that it was necessary to prosecute them. In October 1912 

 the Defence' Minister stated that the Opposition to the Act was no greater than to 

 the Compulsory Education Act. Penalties of fines and imprisonment are provided 

 for disobedience. 



The numbers under training when the system is in full operation are estimated 

 at 100,000 senior cadets and 120,000 citizen soldiers. But as after training the citizen 

 soldier will pass into a reserve, the potential military resources of the Commonwealth 

 in the future are only to be calculated by the total number of males of " military age " 

 minus those who had been exempted from training. On the basis of the present popu- 

 lation there would be 366,000 males between the ages of 18 and 26, 330,000 between 26 

 and 35, and a further 614,000 between 35 and 60. Exemptions, at a broad guess, might 

 be -25%. The organisation of the establishment proposes at present 28 regiments of 

 Light Horse, 56 batteries of Field Artillery, and 92 battalions of Infantry, and a due 

 proportion of Engineers and Army Services Corps. 



In regard to naval defence there was strong criticism of the subsidy policy at the 

 very outset of the Federation. But that policy was warmly supported by the British 

 Admiralty and the Imperial Defence Committee; and the impression was given that 

 the only alternative to an Australian cash subsidy towards the British Navy was no 

 co-operation at all in the naval defence of the Empire. Indeed the early advocates 

 of an Australian Navy were met in their own country with charges of disloyalty to the 

 mother country. But Australian public opinion steadily hardened on the subject. 

 The British Admiralty was ultimately converted, in part at least. On December 19, 

 1907 Mr. Deakin as Prime Minister of Australia outlined a scheme by which Australia 

 would devote the amount of the naval subsidy, then 200,000 a year, to the building 

 of an Australian fleet, under the control of the Commonwealth Government but trained 

 to co-operate with the British Navy. He proposed, in short, that in naval defence 

 Australia should set up an independent but loyal system corresponding to the one she 

 had adopted in military defence. Mr. Deakin announced that the British Admiralty 

 did not altogether endorse his views, especially in regard to the control of the Australian 

 Navy in time of war, which was kept with the Commonwealth Government unless it 

 chose to pass that control over to the British Admiralty. 



No great advance was made in regard to naval defence until the general anxiety 

 as to the European situation in 1909 made the subject of Imperial Defence of the first 

 importance. Australia was represented at an Imperial Defence Conference in 1909 

 which showed a remarkable change of opinion on the subject of " local navies " oh 

 the part of the British Admiralty. They brought down to the Conference, as a sub- 

 stitute for an Australian subsidy to the British Navy, a proposal for the building of 

 an independent Australian fleet unit with the help of a British Treasury subsidy of 

 250,000. The Australian Government adopted the scheme in its entirety, except 

 that it refused to accept the subsidy and decided to put the whole cost on the Australian 

 taxpayer. Under this scheme Australia was to provide a fleet unit with a " Dread- 

 nought " cruiser as its chief vessel. There was no provision for the automatic transfer 



