30. MILITARY SYSTEM. Historical. The Canadian military system has its roots in the principle of universal, compulsory mili tary service. This principle was firmly estab lished in the French colony on the Saint Law rence; when this colony passed under the Brit ish flag and was supplemented by English speaking colonies to the east and the west the principle was maintained. The general system of defense in use by Great Britain for her North American colonies in the first half of the 19th century provided wholly against attack from the south; at that period there existed an antagonism between the British empire and the United States which a century of peace fortunately has removed. The method adopted was (1) to maintain in the North American colonies (Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, etc.) a garrison of the British regular army, which until about 1840 was roughly equal in strength to the regular army of the United States; (2) so to organize the male inhabitants of the colonies as to facili tate their embodiment in emergency in firmly organized corps, under regular conditions and discipline and under the leadership of regular officers; (3) to provide in advance arms, stores and equipment for these native troops. By the militia until 1862 was meant the peace organization of the male inhabitants of the country suited to this scheme. No attempt was made at peace training; the effort made was to impress upon the people's minds the uni versal obligation of service and to provide for the rapid and orderly raising of service corps. There was an annual muster parade of all men of military age, and all liable to serve were divided into regiments and companies; local officers were appointed, but these officers were for duties of administration rather than of leadership, and if the need of mobilization had occurred their function would have been to select from their formations suitable men to be organized into service corps, which, as already stated, would have been trained and led under the supervision of the regular army. The mainspring of this system was the presence in the country of a com paratively large force of regulars, and when, after the Crimean War, the government of Great Britain gradually denuded the colonies of regular troops, and at last withdrew these almost altogether from Canada, the old organ ization fell into decay. Early in the second
half of the 19th century the second phase set in with the organization of a number of sepa rate volunteer corps; the citizen soldiers com prising these drilled in their spare time after the manner now familiar on the North Ameri can continent, and the volunteers gradually supplanted the old militia. The slight Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870 were repelled mainly by the use of these volunteers, and after con federation in 1867 the whole defense of Canada was committed to a new volunteer militia of this type. The principle of universal compul sory service remained on the statute book, but in practice there was no compulsion and the Dominion kept up a, voluntarily enlisted citizen force. In corps enlisted in the cities the regi ments trained by evening drills; the corps raised in rural districts went to camp for 12 days in the year. The training was imperfect, and higher organization, stores for mobiliza tion and staff services were neglected. In 1870 the British troops were finally withdrawn from the Dominion, with the exception of the naval stations of Halifax and Esquimalt, and from that year to the period of the South African War the military equipment of the country was slight. A revolt by a few half-breeds and Indians in the Northwest territories in 1885 was put down wholly by the forces of the Do minion, about 5,000 being employed. To the struggle in South Africa the Dominion con tributed about 8,000 men; of these 7,000 crossed the sea, while the remainder undertook the garrisoning of Halifax, and so released an equivalent number of the British regular army for active service. All the corps so employed were specially raised for the war. The ex perience of this war, and the gradual deepen ing of the diplomatic dangers which led to the great European War, caused Canadian states men and soldiers to reorganize the defensive forces of the country. The process was a gradual one; it began about 1902 and was still in progress when the explosion of 1914 oc curred.