CANADA AND THE COLD WAR

To draft or not to draft?

That question remained on the minds of military and political leaders following the Second World War

Conscription for overseas military service has been one of the most contentious issues in Canada’s history. In the Great War, Prime Minister Robert Borden’s Military

Service Act divided Canadians sharply, prompted riots in Quebec, and saw more than 90 per cent of those called up across the country seek exemptions. Even so, conscripts kept the Canadian Corps up to strength in the last battles of the conflict. In the Second World War, the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King promised there would be no conscription for overseas service, but then took a series of steps toward reversing that promise as the war developed.

First there was home-defence conscription, then a plebiscite on releasing the government from its no-conscription promise, then the use of conscripts anywhere in North America, and finally in the last months of the war, the overseas dispatch of “zombies,” as the conscripts were derisively called by volunteer soldiers.

Conscription actually remained under consideration after the Second World War. Indeed, the first plan for universal military training emerged from the army’s planners in June 1945, even before the war with Japan had ended. Dubbed Plan G, it called for the induction of men 18½ to 19½ years of age for one year of training, with a goal of creating a regular force of some 56,000 and a militia of 177,000. Sixty per cent of Canadians favoured peacetime conscription, according to a 1944 opinion poll, so perhaps the planners believed they had the wind in their sails.

But the army had forgotten one key factor. The King government had been re-elected in June 1945, and King relied on Quebec for his support. No government led by him was ever going to support peacetime compulsory

service; no politician who remembered the fights of 1917 and the conscription crises of the Second World War would do so. The army’s plans faced a frigid reception, with the prime minister writing in his diary that he “resented strongly” the army’s demands that the country be ready to fight another war. In 1945, no one was ready to consider that.

Within a few years, however, the Soviet Union was threatening Europe, the Communists were seizing power in China, and the Cold War was underway. In March 1948, President Harry S. Truman called for conscription in the United States. King, still prime minister, was horrified: If conscription were to be considered in Canada, he wrote, many Canadians “will say if we are to risk our lives fighting Communism, we better save our heads by joining with them.” King told his ministers that if Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty alliance, “certainly there would be no commitment of any kind” for conscription.

But a few months later, King was gone and Louis St. Laurent was prime minister. St. Laurent, a francophone, was no militarist, but he understood that another war was a possibility. The time might come, he told a Quebec labour group, when the Soviets would need to be shown that the limit had been reached. He could make no pledge against conscription. There was certainly some support for compulsory service: The Royal Canadian Legion called for it in 1946 and retired General Harry Crerar, commander of the First Canadian Army in 1944-45, called for it in 1949. Again, no one in Ottawa listened.

What changed matters was North Korea’s invasion of the Republic of Korea in late June 1950. This new Communist aggression led to the dispatch of a Canadian brigade group to Korea to fight under the U.S.-led United Nations forces and the raising of a second brigade for western Europe under NATO. Could enough men be found without conscription? The government believed so, but conscription talk still increased. In September 1950, the Legion again called for conscription for the reserve forces, and newspapers and magazines joined in. But in Ottawa, the message seemed clear: “Not yet.”

“Few people here have any hope, though many wish, that we shall actually have conscription, not for a while yet anyhow,” wrote Maclean’s columnist Blair Fraser. But, he went on, a national registration was possible: “Get everybody listed, identified, classified as to occupation, age and civil status.”

The government did go so far as to prepare National Registration Certificates listing exactly those details. And labour minister Milton Gregg, a Victoria Cross recipient from the Great War, told the National Advisory Council on Manpower in February 1951 that if war started, the government “would take such compulsory steps as are necessary” to get the men required for service anywhere in the world.

Another sign of the changed attitude in Ottawa was St. Laurent’s comment in the House of Commons that same month. “This is not a matter which can or should be decided on sentimental grounds,” he said. “It is one which should be decided on its merits, and strictly on its merits, and with regard to what will make for the efficiency and the effectiveness of our contribution to the joint efforts that have to be put forth.”

In fact, the Liberal cabinet had already decided that conscription would be implemented immediately if war with the Soviet Union occurred. Defence minister Brooke Claxton quietly told a friend that this decision was largely based on Quebec’s confidence in St. Laurent. “With this prime minister, we can do anything in Quebec.”

But there was no general war, and hence no conscription. This disturbed Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds. In a memorandum for Claxton in May 1951, Simonds detailed the case for registration and compulsory service. He soon did the same in public and private addresses, earning him a stiff reprimand. Speeches by Crerar and press campaigns calling for compulsory service also followed, but no government action ensued. As long as Canada could meet its military commitments in Korea and Europe with the voluntary system, there seemed no need for a battle over conscription. And once the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, the pressure for a change in the manning of the military died away.

Today, the idea of conscription is scarcely ever heard. But should there be another world war, there can be little doubt that pressure for drafting able-bodied men—and now women—for military service will rise again. L

On March 23, 1939, five months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, students from Université de Montréal staged an anti-conscription demonstration at Champs de Mars, a former military parade ground in Vieux-Montréal. The sign reads “Pas de conscription. La jeunesse veut la paix” (No conscription. Youth want peace).” “GET EVERYBODY LISTED, IDENTIFIED, CLASSIFIED AS TO OCCUPATION, AGE AND CIVIL STATUS.”