Conscription: Division In Society

The debate of conscription between those who wanted to adopt it or those who still wanted volunteerism was developing and this caused division in society. In 1915, public opinion was changing to demand for conscription, but many still resisted conscription. Women were the most prominent group expressing their opinions of ‘all eligible man should fight’ in publicly, great supporters of conscription. Especially, those who had husbands, brothers or sons overseas fighting began to feel contempt towards men visible in town and called for ‘White Feathers’ which is symbol of ‘cowardice’ to name and shame them into fighting. ‘Shirkers’, however, wanted to choose whether go the fight or not rather than being forced to fight. The Labour movement were another group which initially opposed to
However, Labour began to support the conscription as they realised conscription was the only way to demonstrate equality in NZ in that men of all classes would fight, which brings out division between pro and anti-conscription in Labour movement. Government was still reluctant to implement ‘conscription’ but strong support for volunteerism it is because initially they wanted military full of ‘volunteers’ not ‘conscripted’ soldiers due to belief that conscription would make them weak as it shows that soldiers were forced to fight it seen as less patriotic. However, within public confusion and growing demand for conscription, government introduced National Register Bill on August 1915 which was last chance of voluntarism given before introduce conscription that asked whether men would enlist, but only 30% of eligible volunteered, 34,000 eligible were unwilling to