651,160 were not starred. This figure of itself sounded the knell of voluntaryism, and on Jan. 5 1916 Mr. Asquith introduced the first Military Service bill. From the point of view of limita- tion of recruitment the important provisions of that Act are contained in Section 2, which empowered a Government depart- ment to grant certificates of exemption to men on work of na- tional importance in consultation with the Army Council. It provided further that a Government department might direct that certificates of this nature previously granted should be regarded as certificates within the meaning of the Act.
In the course of the discussion on the bill grave fears were expressed by the Labour party lest the powers of the Act, and particularly those as to exemption, should be used for the pur- pose of industrial compulsion. It was pointed out by Mr. W. C. Anderson on the second reading * that an employer would have power of life and death over his employee, and safeguards were accordingly introduced into the bill so that an employer should not, by merely dismissing a man, compel him to take military service. The Military Service Act became law on Jan. 27 1916. It was laid down that numbered badges issued by the Admiralty, War Office or Ministry of Munitions should be treated as certificates of exemption for the purpose of the Act.
Steps were further taken to exchange for numbered certifi- cates the unnumbered Admiralty badges. The actual exchange was obviously a matter of considerable difficulty.
It is certain that for many reasons the exchange was never complete or satisfactory, but it is probable that no system could have been devised to render it so.
It was expected that the operation of the first Military Service Act would remedy the admittedly grave shortage in the inflow of recruits for the services. These hopes were not realized. Many causes operated to defeat them, but one to which increas- ing attention was drawn was the system of exemptions. The position was now reversed. At the outset of munitions shortage the forces were accused of starving the factories, now the factories were accused of starving the forces, the truth being that there were never enough men for both needs, and that each was supplied at the expense of the other according to the pre- dominant military need of the moment.
However this may be, from the passing of the first Military Service Act the problem of limitation of recruitment became rather one of finding men for the forces than of preventing their enlistment, but with this vital qualification that they were to be found with the least possible loss to munitions production.
From this point begins the active policy of debadging, which
was in effect the negative side of " dilution." Public feeling
against men " under the umbrella " was growing,
and so well-informed a critic as Lord Derby could
say on May i8, 2 in the debate in the House of
Lords on the second Military Service bill, which extended
compulsory service to married men who had not attested:
" That is the question of men in munition works who are eligible for military service, and who are, in the opinion of the various local- ities in which they are working, only shirking by being in those works. That has given rise to more trouble with regard to recruiting than anything else. You have grocers, pawnbrokers' assistants, all classes of men going into munition works and securing exemptions; and it is the fact of their so securing exemption, although not skilled, that gives rise to so much irritation. . . .
" Arrangements are being made by means of a committee to debadge these men and secure them for military service. But I should be deceiving your Lordships if I did not tell you that these methods of debadging are excessively slow ; and if we are to wait for that system to work itself out, coupled with two months' exemption, we shall not get the men as rapidly as is desired."
His reference to the Debadging Committee indicates a step which had already been taken in the hope of controlling the issue of badges. This committee, with Mr. Walter Long, M.P., as chairman, held its first meeting on March 20. But although it was a Cabinet committee of an authoritative kind it was able to accomplish little. The difficulty was one which was common to this and to practically all other subsequent coordinating
1 Parliamentary Debates' (1916) H. of C., LXXVII. 1416 et seg. 'Parliamentary Debates (1916) H. of L., XXI. 1099.
committees set up to deal with the problem of the labour supply. The questions to be determined depended on two sets of con- siderations (a) the general strategic policy of the Government, and (b) the practical facts of industry and production.
No ' committee could ever replace the actual departments concerned with the supply of munitions from the second point of view, nor the War Council or Cabinet from the first. This particular committee, possessing neither the power to decide policy nor the knowledge to settle badging questions in detail (which in the second week of May were coming in at the rate of 12,195 per week), was doomed to failure, and, after some months of struggling with an impossible task, made way for the Man- Power Distribution Board on Sept. 3.
But while the committee was sitting the departments were not idle. The extent to which protection from enlistment had now proceeded may be judged from a consideration of the results of two returns obtained from badged firms to the number of 12,000, May and Dec. 1916. These returns showed that, of a total number of 2,112,896 males employed, a total of 1,118,767 were of military age. Of these 698,587 were skilled, leaving a very considerable balance of semi-skilled and unskilled whose retention was naturally challenged. A return covering a wider area indicated that the total number of men protected either by badges, exemptions or recruiting officers' certificates, was 2,686,400. A change in the basis of badging was introduced in May 1916. Up to that date the employer had been responsible for the issue of the badges. From that date the direct responsi- bility for their issue was assumed by the Ministry of Munitions. This shifting of responsibility, while casting a great additional burden on the department, put them in a position to deal with the whole question more comprehensively and with greater certainty. It enabled them, for example, to attack with increased vigour the problem of debadging. Debadging was necessarily carried on in close association with and by the same officers responsible for dilution. The principles upon which these officers worked were to deal with all cases of badged men who were not occupied three-quarters of their time on important work, or whose work could be done by female or other labour ineligible for mili- tary service, and for whom substitutes could be found. If the men were skilled they should be drafted to other civilian work of national importance; if unskilled, to the forces. The task set these officers was one of great difficulty, 3 but by Aug. 1916 32,798 badges had been withdrawn, 9,475 firms, covering 850,268 badges, having been visited.
But even so the position was far from satisfactory. The first battle of the Somme had made severe inroads on the man-power of the nation, and the situation in this respect was perhaps as critical at the date of the establishment of the Man-Power Board as at any time during the war.
This board were set up with at least a partial understanding of the difficulties which had been encountered by the committee on exemptions, the place of which they took. Their functions included the settlement of questions arising between Government departments on the use of man-power, and the giving of directions to the departments. Moreover, programmes involving important demands for man- power were to be submitted to the board; the authority of which, subject to the War Committee, was final.
The board were only more successful than their predecessors in that, by their recommendations, they brought the rapidly growing difficulty to a crisis. They found themselves confronted by the two same root difficulties. They could not regulate the programmes either of the forces or the departments, as they did not control policy, and they were bound, on the practical question of the number and quality of men required to carry out the programmes, to rely on the executive departments.
But in spite of these difficulties the Man-Power Board were able to make new recommendations of first-class importance. One was that no badge certificates should be issued to men (a) who had already been decertified by a Government department;
'For fuller account of " dilution," see below.
